Mr President of the International Jury,
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all, a greeting, full of respect, to everyone here and my heartfelt thanks to those who decided to award me the prestigious 1996 UNESCO prize for peace education.
Allow me to offer a few thoughts to this noble assembly.
I will not speak of the history and structure of the Focolare Movement, a Movement that, together with many other excellent and valuable organizations, initiatives and projects, is a means in the present day for bringing unity and peace. You have already heard about this, as shown by the citation awarding the prize.
Rather, I would like to speak about the secret of its success.
It comes from a new way of acting, a new lifestyle adopted by millions of people. This lifestyle is inspired fundamentally by Christian principles, but it does not overlook, indeed it highlights parallel values present in other faiths and cultures, and has brought into the world, in need of finding or consolidating peace, both peace itself and unity.
It is a new spirituality, timely and modern: the spirituality of unity.
But is unity, and the peace that comes from it, relevant today?
As we all know and can observe, the world today is characterized by tensions: between South and North; in the Middle East, in Africa; by wars, the threat of new conflicts; and by other typical evils of our age. This is true. And yet, in spite of all these tensions, our world, paradoxically, seems to be moving towards unity and therefore towards peace: it is a sign of the times.
It can be seen, for example, in numerous international bodies and organizations.
In the political world, as in Europe, unity is affirmed by nations that are working to join together.
In the religious world, we can see this thrust towards unity in the establishment of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, and particularly, among Christians, it can be seen by the fact that the Holy Spirit is urging the different Churches and ecclesial communities to unite after centuries of indifference and struggle.
It is underlined by the World Council of Churches, and it was stated by the Second Vatican Council whose documents repeatedly return to this idea.
This thrust towards unity is also shown by ideologies which, in part, have been surpassed, but which aimed at resolving the problems of the world in a global manner.
Likewise, the modern means of communication foster unity by bringing the whole world into communities and families.
Yes, the world is tending towards unity. And the Focolare Movement and its spirituality should be viewed in this context.
Its spirituality is lived not only individually, but together as a community. In fact, it has a marked communitarian dimension.
It is deeply rooted in several words of the Gospel, which are interlinked with one another.
I will cite only a few here.
It is based, first of all, for those who share in this spirituality, on a profound view of God as he is: Love, Father.
How indeed could we think of peace and unity in the world without the vision of all humanity as one family? And how can we see it as such without the presence of a Father for all?
This spirituality therefore calls us to open our hearts to God who is our Father, who certainly does not abandon his children to their fate, but who wants to accompany, protect and help them. For he knows human beings in their intimate depths, looks after each person in particular, even counting the hairs on their head. He does not lay burdens on their shoulders that are too heavy to bear, rather he is the first to carry them.
He does not leave people alone to fend for themselves as they seek to renew society, but he is concerned and involved.
Believing in his love, believing that we are loved personally and immensely, is vital to this new spirituality.
To believe.
And, from among the countless possibilities of our life, to choose him as our Ideal. This means to put ourselves, intelligently, in the position that everyone eventually faces in the future, when we reach the destiny to which we have been called: Eternity.
Clearly, however, it is not enough to believe in God’s love, it is not enough to have made this great choice of him as our Ideal. The presence and care of the Father of all calls each one to be his child, to love the Father in return, and to fulfil, day after day, that particular plan of love which the Father has in mind for each one, that is, by doing his will.
And we know that the first will of a father is that his children treat one another as brothers and sisters, that they care for one another, that they love one another, that they know and practice what can be described as the art of loving.
This art of loving means that we love each one as ourselves, because ‘You and I,’ said Gandhi, ‘are one. I cannot hurt you without wounding myself’.
It means being the first to love, without expecting the other person to love us in return.
It means knowing how to ‘make ourselves one’ with others, that is, to identify with their burdens, their thoughts, their sufferings, their joys.
But, if this love of neighbour is lived out by more than one person, it becomes mutual.
And Christ, the ‘Son’ par excellence of the Father, the Brother of every human being, left as the norm for humanity: mutual love. He knew that it was needed to bring peace and unity into the world, for to make all humanity one family.
Certainly, whoever undertakes to move the mountains of hatred and violence today is facing an enormous and heavy task. But what is impossible to millions of people who are divided, each one on his or her own, seems to become possible to people who have made of mutual love, of reciprocal understanding, of unity, the mainspring of their lives.
Why is this so? There is a reason.
A surprising and amazing element of this new spirituality, which is linked to mutual love and is very precious indeed, is something else announced by the Gospel. It says that if two or more persons are united in true love, Christ himself, who is Peace, is present in their midst and, therefore, in them.
What better guarantee, what greater possibility could there be for those who want to be an instrument of brotherhood and peace?
This reciprocal love, this unity, which gives much joy to whoever puts it into practice, calls for commitment, daily training, sacrifice.
And here, for Christians, there appears in all its light and drama a word which the world does not want to hear, because it considers it to be foolishness, absurdity, nonsense.
This word is the cross.
Nothing good, useful, or fruitful can be accomplished in the world without accepting fatigue, suffering, in a word, without the cross.
Being committed to living and to bringing peace is not to be taken lightly! One must have courage, one must know how to suffer.
But certainly, if more people would accept suffering out of love, the suffering required by love, it would become the most powerful instrument for giving humanity its highest dignity: that of feeling that we are not so much a togetherness of peoples, one beside the other, often in conflict with one another, but that we are one single people.
Moreover, God the Father has not left us unaided in this arduous journey. We know the resources that the Church has always put at the disposal of Christians.
And it is not possible to forget Mary, who is loved, venerated, and present also in other religions, Mary, the Mother of Jesus and of every person on earth. From her we can draw inspiration, comfort, support. The task of a mother is that of always bringing the family together.
This communitarian spirituality is not necessarily linked to one Church: it is universal; therefore, it can be lived by many.
In fact, through this spirituality fruitful dialogues have been opened with all people, with Christians of many Churches, with members of many religions and with people of the most diverse cultures, who find emphasized here the values they believe in, and together we set out towards that fullness of truth to which everyone is moving.
Through this spirituality, men and women today of almost all the nations of the world are slowly but decisively seeking to be, wherever they are, seeds of a new people, of a world of peace, with more solidarity especially towards the least, the poorest, to be seeds of a more united world.
May God, the Father of all, make these efforts of ours fruitful, along with the efforts of all those who are working for the illustrious goal of peace. And, as John Paul II said to the United Nations on the fiftieth anniversary of its founding (and this can be significant now on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of UNESCO): ‘In the next century and the next millennium we can build a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom and peace.
‘We can and must do so!’ he continued. ‘And in doing so, we shall see that the tears of this century have prepared the ground for a new springtime of the human spirit.’
And the prize I am receiving today will also be used for the promotion of unity and peace. In a little town of the Movement by the name of Peace, in the Philippines, Asia, it will help to build a structure at the service of interreligious dialogue.
Chiara Lubich
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