The art of love, sharing of my experience with some filipino seminarians.

Can we say that we become experts in the art of loving while coming to the Focolari movement? I think it would presumptuous for several reasons. First because you don’t wait until you get to know the movement to start to love. Jesus and the Gospel are clear about the importance of loving. If we enter in a seminary to become consecrated persons, it is because we have already experienced love and we discover in our heart a high generosity that impels us to love all people without distinction. Secondly, the more we stay in a group, the more we realize that in any group to decide to love does not mean that we are always successful. The 12 apostles although they had the best loving teacher, still they wanted to be considered as important people. They felt in the temptation of pride, even if Jesus had told them that what matters is to be the least of all and the servant of all. If I had to compare the way we love in my congregation and the way we love in the Focolari movement, I could certainly explain why in some aspects of our lives, we love better in my congregation than in the Focolari and why in other aspects, the Focolari are better at loving. However to compare is useless. What matters is to learn from each place where we live, what we can benefit from the people we encounter. For future priests as you are, it is essential. Being called to be pastors, you are constantly invited by God to know people, to see what sustains them and to encourage them to persevere in their spirituality and commitments. To behave in such a way, you cannot stay at a distance. You need to make yourselves one with what they are experiencing. For me, to be a pastor starts with being genuinely cheerful with the people we encounter, telling them that they are doing well and that we support them.

Saying that, what did I learn from the Focolari since my childhood and especially during this year in Tagaytay? I look deeper at one key point of the spirituality of the Focolari, that is to identify the relationship that exists between the experience of Jesus abandoned on the cross (when he expresses to God the Father his complete feeling of solitude) and the love that at this precise moment, he shares to people. In other words, to love in moments of suffering and loneliness is not less fruitful than to love when you feel that people love you back and there is a mutual love. It is mysterious and very difficult to accept this mysterious “suffering love”. However it is an amazing thing to treasure in our lives. In fact, every time we experience the failure in mutual love, we can still love others and even love them more, with God’s grace. I am not sure I have yet understood fully what I am saying to you, but actually, many times, when I am in a moment of distress, I say to God: “Help me to love my enemies” and the fact of being united with Jesus on the cross at this moment when I am despised by others, have helped me a lot to accept things with humility in my life. Another thing that I learned this year and that profoundly touched my heart is the definition of chastity given by Chiara Lubich, the founder of the movement of the Focolari. Chastity is related to another key point of the Focolari spirituality, the call to live the present moment, without being distracted neither by the past nor by the future. She said that to be chaste is to be fully present for the person you have in front of you at the present moment, and after you say goodbye to that person, in order to continue your daily activities, to have exactly the same attitude with the next person you meet, putting aside the previous person, in order to be fully present for the next one. By doing this, we live to the full our supernatural call to live for Jesus only and we also experience beautiful relationship with people than witness our freedom in the art of loving.

The third element of the Focolari that really sustain me in my life is the art of sharing our experiences on how to love. It is not that I succeed in loving in each moment of my life, but I am ready to disclose my experience with other people, so that they can or feel encouraged when I succeeded to love with generosity my brothers and sisters, or to carry my cross and pray for me when I failed to love my brothers and sisters. Did I practice these three elements of the spirituality here? Yes, I did, I felt at times abandoned, I tried to live for the person in front of me, I shared my experience many times and listened to the experiences of other people. Was I successful? Not always…but I want to continue to develop this art of loving, thank you for listening to me.

View of Taal volcano and of some plants in our garden (sala Leo)