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Inspiration from a Bold Mystic 19-22 Tablet 11 Aug 07 BooksLL 8/8/07 3:20 pm Page 1 BOOKS AUSTEN IVEREIGH Desolata, one both intimate and empty; and she is Theotokos, mother of God, the per- sonification of the Scriptures. Lubich on INSPIRATION Mary often hits notes of extravagance: she is “the flower blossoming on the tree of humanity, born of God who created the first seed in Adam. FROM A BOLD She is the daughter of God her Son” – which some may think best confined to a spiritual MYSTIC diary. But she can equally strike on something apparently straightforward – “do to others what would you have them do to you” – and flesh Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings: out a whole practical programme for living. spirituality, dialogue, culture The second part of the book is a series of Compiled and ed. Michel Vandeleene insights for such a programme. In one essay NEW CITY PRESS, £12.40 she suggests asking yourself, when you meet ■ Tablet bookshop price £11.20 Tel 01420 592974 someone, what they are going through, and keep loving them until you find that same suf- fering in yourself. “Love will suggest to me how ith 140,000 members worldwide, I can help them,” she says, “because as Chris- and another 2 million connected tians we know the value of suffering.” Spend in other ways through its prayer Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare one day doing this, Chiara insists, and “a joy W groups, ecumenical and interfaith movement, receiving an honorary we have never felt before will flood over us. meetings – not to mention its 20-odd towns doctorate from the Catholic University A new power will fill us. God will be with us, and 654 businesses run on “communion” of America in Washington DC because he is with those who love.” principles – Focolare is one of the most im- The third part seeks to apply her programme pressively numerous movements in modern Trento; filled with fire and vision, she set about of empathy through kenosis to the worlds of Catholicism. It pops up everywhere: hosting putting into practice the words of John’s Gospel, politics, the media and the arts. She delineates a pan-European ecumenical gathering here, “that all may be one”. Her great contribution the mission of her followers with the boldness an “encounter” of politicians, journalists and to Christian spirituality is to take prayer into and directness of a medieval saint: “Today, pol- artists there, offering an Argentinian safe house human relationships. In a world fractured by itics is a weapon that serves Satan,” she says, to the scandal-dogged Archbishop Milingo, clashing narratives, she offers the possibility “but it could also be put to the service of God.” even inspiring the spirituality of the Catholic of “going to God together”, not by dragging Her political manifesto? “We need to put more drug rehab in Brazil which Pope Benedict vis- others or persuading them or defeating them, religion into politics, more mysticism into prac- ited in May. Those kinds of numbers, and its but by “stripping away those habits that allow tice, more wisdom into government, more unity extraordinary energy and commitment, should me to anchor my security in what sets me apart among all.” If this seems a little, well, simple, make it a major feature on the Catholic map. from others”, as the Archbishop of Canterbury it is followed later by a startling insight – that Yet Focolare flies below the radar, escap- puts it in his introduction. Like the Holy Spirit, modern politics has striven after liberty and ing familiar categories: it is a lay association, equality but neglected fraternity. Like Cather- founded and led by a lay woman, but many ine of Siena, she sternly knocks together these members are priests; it is a Catholic move- In bombed-out Trento, squabbling politicians, offers them a “dynamic ment, but a large number of members are Chiara Lubich, filled with of mutuality” and invites them to love each Anglicans, even Muslims; some of its members other’s parties as their own. are celibate, and live together, while others are fire and vision, set out to For sceptics she offers the example of married, with jobs; it is unmistakably Italian, put into practice the words the Bangwa people in English-speaking yet manages to be quite at home in Africa or of St John’s Gospel, that Cameroon, who sought help from Lubich in Hemel Hempstead; it is deeply Marian, yet the 1960s. “I had a strange impression”, she oddly feminist. ‘all may be one’ recalls of her visit there, “that God, like a sun, Pinning down Focolare is like trying to nail was enveloping all of us, Focolarini and jelly to a wall. But why try? It is hard to say Focolare has a genius for relationship, one Bangwa together; and that the sun, almost like what Franciscans are for (peace and joy?) or forged in a spirituality of kenosis, or self- a divine sign, made me foresee the rising of what makes Jesuits different – until you con- emptying, which is developed in the first third a city that we would build together, there in sider their founders, their character and the of this book. The object is to “lose God with- the midst of the tropical forest.” Hospitals, particular insights which flowed from their in us for God in our brothers and sisters” – schools, houses followed; and the Bangwa prayer. Chiara Lubich, Focolare’s octagenar- to seek the Kingdom of God not just within adopted the spirituality of communion. They ian founder – the online Wikipedia has her us but within people, “to speak in order to be- live now “in absolute peace”, without need even down, oddly, as an “Italian Catholic activist” come one with others”, as she says in her classic of police. – is not a theologian, exactly; but she has a essay, “The Spirituality of Communion”. “If you This is a handsomely put together book in trained mind unafraid of major ideas. Nor, des- cannot always pray, you can always love,” she a hotchpotch of styles – spiritual musings, pite flashes of beauty, is she a writer: the style says. Two people “fused in the name of major addresses, letters to followers – followed is too clunky, sometimes even pedestrian, to Christ” become a “divine power in the world”, by useful sources: chronology, bibliography have won her the readership of an Henri she notes in ‘The Dream of a God”: the soul and index. For anyone wanting to get inside Nouwen or Ronald Rolheiser. But poring over endures pain by thinking of the pain or joy the mind and heart of one of the Church’s most this anthology, it is hard not to grasp her sig- of others; this is “the little secret that builds, significant contemporary figures, it cannot be nificance to contemporary Catholicism. brick by brick, the city of God within us and bettered; it is also just the thing to hand the Lubich is essentially a mystic: she was illu- among us”. Congregation for the Causes of the Saints when minated as a young woman in bombed-out Hence Mary as model: she is at once La – as it surely will – that time comes. 11 August 2007 | THE TABLET | 19 19-22 Tablet 11 Aug 07 BooksLL 8/8/07 3:20 pm Page 2 Respectful adversaries Near East, on to the Crusades and then the rise of the Ottoman empire and, finally (if a little sketchily), into the modern era. He is People of the Book: the forgotten to be applauded for grappling with such an history of Islam and the West unwieldy subject, and it is very satisfying to Zachary Karabell see the role of Judaism being discussed at JOHN MURRAY, £25 considerable length. From time to time, ■ Tablet bookshop price £22.50 Tel 01420 592974 however, Karabell’s delivery lets him down. Writing a history book that tries to teach lessons to the present by recounting episodes n 917, two envoys from the Byzantine from the past is a perilous pursuit. You run Icourt in Constantinople travelled to the God moves a mountain for the the risk of being anachronistic or reductive heart of the Abbasid empire: the fabled city Christians of Baghdad, illustrated (pitfalls that Karabell doesn’t always of Baghdad. Upon reaching the caliph’s manuscript of c. 1412. From The Church sidestep) and the tendency to preach is compound, they were taken on a tour of 23 of the East by Christoph Baumer (IB hard to resist. Historians are fully fledged palaces including the palace of the tree, Tauris, £25) members of society, of course, and they with its astonishing automata; the palace of have their opinions about the full gamut of the 100 lions, where wild beasts began contemporary issues, but too often in these “sniffing them and eating from their antagonism between Islam and the West is, pages one has the sense of being lectured at. hands”; and the palace of paradise, where as Karabell avers, deeply questionable. He If he sometimes misfires, however, eunuchs slaked the ambassadors’ thirst with does not ignore the darker side of this long Karabell writes extremely well and many of iced water and sherbet. Thirty-eight and complex history. Some of his accounts his chapters – notably his even-handed thousand wall hangings, 22,000 elegant are rose-tinted but, for the most part, he discussion of the Crusades – are extremely carpets and countless trays of jewels were does not seek to deny the recurrent carnage rewarding. The relationship between Islam on display to impress the visitors. or cruelty.
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