September 2007

If we make a ‘pact of mercy’ with everyone, so that we look past their shortcomings, forgiving and forgetting their failures, we will grow in love.

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. (1 Tim. 6: 11)

How can we live all these virtues in our daily lives?

It may seem difficult to practise them one after another. So why don’t we live the present moment with the radicality of love? If you live the present moment in God’s will, then God dwells in you, and if God is in you, charity is in you.

Whoever lives the present, depending on circumstances, is patient, persevering, gentle, poor of all things, pure, merciful because they possess love in its highest and most genuine expression; they truly love God with all their heart, all their mind, all their strength; they have an inner light and, guided by the Holy Spirit, they do not judge or think ill of others, but love their neighbour as themselves; they have the strength of the Gospel lunacy ‘to turn the other cheek’, ‘to go the extra mile’ …’ (see Matt. 5: 41)

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

This advice is given to Timothy, Paul’s faithful helper, his companion on the journey and friend, who was so intimate with him that he became like a son. ‘As for you, man of God,’ the apostle writes to him after denouncing pride, envy, quarrelling, attachments and money, ‘shun all this’. He invites Timothy to turn to a life where the human and Christian virtues shine out.

Echoing in these words is the commitment made at baptism to renounce evil (‘shun’) and hold fast to good. (‘turn’) From the Holy Spirit comes the transformation in depth, the capacity and the strength to act on Paul’s words:

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

The experience lived by the first group of girls that gave life to the focolare in Trent in 1944 helps us to see how we could live this Word of Life and in particular love, endurance and gentleness.

It wasn’t always easy in the beginning to live the radicality of love. Sometimes a layer of dust settled on our relationships, and our unity was weakened. This happened when, for example, we noticed the shortcomings and imperfections of the others and judged them, so that the current of mutual love grew cold.

One day to confront this situation, we decided to make a pact with each other, and we called it the ‘pact of mercy’.

We decided that every morning we would see each person we met - whether in the focolare, at school or at work - in a new way, a completely new way, not remembering their shortcomings, but covering everything with love. It meant approaching everybody with this complete amnesty in our hearts, with this universal forgiveness.

It was a serious commitment we all made together. It helped us always to be as much as possible the first in loving, imitating God who is merciful, who forgives and forgets.

Chiara Lubich