12 January
If a city were set on fire

If a city were set alight at various points, even by small fires, but they managed to resist being put out, soon the city would be aflame. If a city, in the most different places, were lit up by the fire that Jesus brought on earth, and this fire, through the goodwill of the people who lived there, managed to resist the ice of the world, we would soon have the city aflame with the love of God.
The fire that Jesus brought to earth is himself. It is charity: that love which not only binds the soul to God, but also souls to one another.
In fact, a lighted supernatural fire means the continual triumph of God in souls who have given themselves to him and, because they are united to him, united among themselves.
Two or more people united in the name of Christ, who are not afraid or ashamed to declare explicitly to one another their desire to love God, but who actually make of this unity in Christ their Ideal, are a divine power in the world. And in every city these souls could exist in families: father and mother, son and father, mother and mother-in-law. They could meet in parishes, in associations, in social bodies, in schools, in offices, everywhere.

Chiara Lubich

Meditations
New City London 2005, p. 59

(published by the Priestly Branch of the Focolare Movement)

1月12日
燃烧的城市

如果在一个城市不同的地方投火,虽然火势微弱,只要它能承受住各种阻力,整个城市很快将会变成火海。如果一个城市中,到处燃起耶稣投在地上的火,这火透过人们的善志承受住世界的冰冷,不久整个城市就会燃烧起天主的圣爱之火。
耶稣所投在地上的火就是仁爱,就是他自己。这爱不仅使灵魂与天主结合,同时也使人与人之间彼此结合。其实,燃起超性的火焰,就是天主在奉献给他的灵魂之内的持续的胜利,目的是使这些灵魂结合于他并在他内彼此合而为一。
那里有两个或更多因基督之名融合一起的灵魂,他们不但不害怕或者不羞于彼此宣认他们对天主的渴慕,更以在基督内合而为一作为他们的理想,他们成了世上一股神圣的力量。而在每一个城市,这些灵魂可能出现在家庭中:爸爸-妈妈、儿子-父亲,儿媳-婆母;可能出现在堂区,协会,社团,学校,办公室以及任何地方。

卢嘉勒

灵修著作/ 1
新城出版社,罗马 1991,70页