Try to understand the other

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This is another aspect of loving my neighbour, which has led me this morning to reflect on one of the many effects of love namely love that generates communion. It is the way in which I really understand the other, by being open and in communion. Again, Chiara gave the key to this my understanding, which is a real challenge!

The Christian is called to live life, to swim in the light, to plunge into crosses, but not to pine away. At times our life is exhausted, our intelligence is clouded and our will is undecided, because educated in this world, we have been used to live an individualistic life, which stands in contradiction to the Christian life.

Christ is love and a Christian must be love. Love generates communion: communion as the basis of Christian life and as its summit.

In this communion a person no longer goes to god alone, but travels in company. This is a fact of incomparable beauty that makes our soul repeats the words of Scripture: “how very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”(Ps 133,1).

Fraternal communion is not, however, a beatific stillness, it a perennial conquest with not only of preserving communion, but also of expanding it among many people, because the communion spoken of here is love, charity, and charity spreads by its very nature.

How often , between those who have decided to go united to God, unity begins to weaken, dust creeps between one soul and another and the enchantment is broken, because the light that had emergedthem all slowly goes out!(…)

We had said we wanted to see only Jesus in our neighbour, to deal with Jesus in our neighbour, to love Jesus in our neighbour, but now we recall that a neighbour has this or or that defect, has this or that imperfection.

Our eye becomes complicated and our being is no longer lit up. As a consequence erring we break unity.

Perhaps that particular neighbour, like all of us, has made mistakes, but how does God view him or her? What really is that person’s condition, the truth of his or her state? If our neighbour is reconciled with God, the God no longer remembers anything; he has wiped out everything with his blood. So, why should we go on remembering?

Who is in error at that moment?

I who judge my neighbour? I am.

Therefore I must myself see things from God’s viewpoint, in the truth, and treat my neighbour accordingly, so that if, by some mishap, he or she has not yet sorted things out with Lord, the warmth of my love, which is Christ in me, will bring my neighbour to repentance, in the same way that the sun dries and heals over many wounds.

Charity is preserved by truth, and truth is pure mercy with which we ought to be clothed from head to foot in order to be able to call ourselves Christians.

And if my neighbour returns?

I must see that person new, as though nothing had happened, and I must begin life together with him or her in the unity of, as the first time, because nothing remains.(…)(Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings, New City London, p 100)

Reflecting on this made me remember the “Golden Rule”: “Do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets” (Mt7:12).