God-Love

Thought for the day

29.01.2015

Don’t be conditioned by differences

 We started the day with introductions from Patience and the Volunteers of the centre, who come from Germany, Italy, Chile, Brazil, Korea, Italy and of course Cameroon. We really are an international family. There are around 800 women volunteers here today, with over 1000 expected by the weekend. We come from Brazil, Africa, the Lebanon, Syria, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy and Malta. Most of the GB volunteers are staying at (and eating in) Sassone as even with two sittings for meals we are too many for the Mariapolis Centre.

We started with Friederike Koller from Germany, a focolarina now responsible for the branch of the women in the centre, introducing three questions and answers from Chiara on the theme of God-Love. From her introduction the sentence that jumped out at me was: "The true challenge in life is to love and to let ourselves be loved". Friederike also talked about a God of Surprises, and that we need to let ourselves be surprised by love. God is always the first to love and we need to recognise this love in all things, including the difficulties (the machines for change and most of the coffee machines being broken, or eating in Sassone, lack of sleep?).

Patience and the team from the Centre of the Volunteers.



Friederike and Angel, those responsible for the women and men's branches of the Movement, introducing the second theme - the final document of the General Assembly, "That All May Be One". Both stressed that we are only one body, one soul, all over the world. We are born for unity and the love of God urges us to live for one another. There is no Centre and Zones - the Centre is there to serve the Zones and the Zones are there to serve humanity. We do this together. It is a time for us to incarnate the Ideal and to work together to find ways to do this.

Our programme - for those who can read the Italian.