IEC2012 Pt. 4: Word of Life Testimony

As a follow up to my spending June 11-13 at the three first full days of 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, I am writing a series of reflections on the different talks, addresses, and workshops I attended on the theme of The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and with One Another. I took notes (including some quotes, hopefully nearly verbatim, that will appear within quotation marks) during the speeches based on different things that struck me personally, and what I offer here on the blog is simply a distillation of how the speeches affected me. They are not meant to be comprehensive summaries but rather the reactions of one pilgrim from a subjective perspective.

Part 4

Testimony: Word of Life

Dr. Maria Voce, Leader of the Focolare Movement

Monday, June 11 - 3pm

Dr. Voce gave her testimony in Italian, which gave me my only opportunity to use my nifty translation earpiece.

Dr. Voce testified to us that baptism is our invitation to be in communion with Christ and with all baptized persons, a nice extension of the theme of the Congress to invite us to consider every baptized person in our reflections on universal communion.

She added that the pursuit of this ideal is "an invitation, not a command." When it comes to realizing such communion in our lives as baptized Christians, we must seek it freely. We must want to say yes to working with others, and ideally, we grow in a way where all Christians can give their yes all together to greater communion with Christ and one another.

The Focolare Movement seeks to give an intimate hearing to the Gospel and, as a result of increased closeness to God's Word, give life to it in their lives. The first members of the movement had a miraculous vision during their reflections on the Bible in which the letters on the page of their Bible became illuminated, inspiring them to proclaim Christ as truly alive. Their first meeting centered on the illuminated letters they saw in the Bible, the prayer of Jesus for unity, "that they may be one."

She told us that reciprocal love - the combination of giving to others and receiving from their love in turn - is a cornerstone of Christian love. The pinnacle of her message was a simple exhortation to live the Gospel: we should live in such a way that, if all the copies of the Gospels were destroyed, the Bible could be recreated based on our actions.