Word of Life

1. Word of Life August 2008 Text by Chiara Lubich written in 1949

2. “The lamp of the body is your eye. When your eye is sound, then your whole body is filled with light.”(Lc 11,34).

3. No matter how many people we meet during the day, from morning to night, let’s try to see Jesus in each one of them.

4. If our eye is simple, the one who sees through it is God. God is Love, and love seeks to unite by winning over the others.

5. How many people mistakenly look at other people and things in order to possess them. It may be a look of selfishness or of envy, but whatever the case, it is one of sin. Or people may look inwards at themselves, and take their lives in their own hands, their faces lifeless because they are bored or worried.

6. The soul, because it is an image of God, is love, but love that turns in on itself is like a flame which dies out because it is not fed.

7. Look outside of you, not inside you, and not at things, not at persons. Look at God outside yourself and unite yourself to him.

8. He lives in the depths of every soul which is alive, and if it were dead, that soul is a tabernacle of God that awaits him as the joy and expression of its own existence.

9. Look at every neighbor then with love, and love means to give. A gift, moreover, calls for a gift, and you will be loved in return.

10. Understood in this way, love means to love and be loved: as in the Trinity. God in you will attract hearts, and ignite the life of the Trinity in them, which may already be in them through grace, but it was extinguished.

11. You cannot turn on the light in a room—even if electricity is available—until the current’s two poles make contact.

12. The life of God in us is similar. It must circulate in order to radiate outside of us and bear witness to Christ, the One who links heaven to earth, and people to one another.

13. So, look at each neighbor. Give yourself to them in order to give yourself to Jesus and Jesus will give himself back to you. It is the law of love: “Give, and it will be given to you” (Lk 6:38).

14. Out of love for Jesus, let your neighbors possess you. Like another Eucharist, let yourself “be eaten” by your neighbors. Place your entire self at their service, which is service to God, and your neighbors will come to you and love you.

15. The fulfillment of God’s every desire lies in fraternal love, which is found in his commandment: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (Jn 13:34).

16. Love is a Fire that penetrates hearts and makes them perfectly one.

17. Then you will no longer find yourself, nor your neighbor; you will find Love which is God living in you.

18. And Love will go out to love other brothers and sisters, for since your eye is now simple, it will discover itself in them and all will be one. And around you a community will grow: just as around Jesus there were twelve, seventy-two, thousands….

19. The Gospel fascinates—because it is Light in love— it captivates and attracts.

20. Then you might die on a cross so as not to be greater than the Master, but you will die for the one who crucifies you, and so love will have the ultimate victory.

21. But the lymph—having been poured out for many hearts—will not die. It will be fruitful, by sowing joy and peace and opening up Paradise. And the glory of God will grow. But here on earth, we have to be perfect Love.

22. “The lamp of the body is your eye. When your eye is sound, then your whole body is filled with light.”(Lc 11,34).