My name is Jeffrey, or Jeprox as my friends call me. I’m a 30-year old Focolare youth member (a “Gen,” as we are called) from Negros Occidental.
Although from a devout Pentecostal family, I grew up an agnostic and didn’t want to have anything to do with religion and God. When I met the Focolare, I then discovered inside me this yearning to have a deep, personal relationship with Him.
I met this way of life in 2008 at a time when I was rebelling against my father who is a pastor of a small Pentecostal church in our town. We couldn’t see eye to eye about anything, from the question of who God is, to what individual freedom means, to how long I should grow my hair. It was a huge disunity that our family suffered from for many years.
Within the Focolare community, especially with the Gen, I started to learn the Art of Loving, and tried to live it concretely at home. Loving the enemy was a painstakingly slow process for me, but it happened. I cut my pride loose, along with my waist-long hair—the symbol of my rebellion—and asked my father for forgiveness. That very act of love allowed us to rebuild our relationship as father and son, a relationship which continues to grow in mutual respect and charity up to this day.
The life of unity is made up of many experiences of light and love, even in the face of suffering. But it has its crises too. At one point, I felt I couldn’t go ahead anymore. I felt that all this loving was just too much. I wanted to be free. So I left the Focolare community and explored my freedom enjoying the ways of the world.
For three years, I tasted what I thought was ultimate freedom and experienced a vindictive sense of self-determination, but looking back now, it felt more than like I was living inside my head where the reality always failed to measure up to the fantasy, leaving me empty, sad, and deeply unfulfilled.
Returning to my Focolare friends where everyone took me in without question or judgment, I felt like the prodigal son who had come home after all that had happened to him, to find only love and acceptance. That was a profound moment for me, realizing that with God’s immense love for us, we can always start again.
I say this because living the life of unity has changed me. In my life, I had previously wanted to be many things, but giving myself to God was not one of them. I couldn’t imagine making such a choice.
In Mariapolis Peace
About a year ago, I came to Mariapolis Peace in Tagaytay to get to know this life of unity better. Today, I live with young people who are preparing to follow the call of God in the Focolare, which is what I, too, feel called to do, to contribute to that prayer of Jesus, “That all may be One.” We are three boys who have made the same radical choice, leaving everything behind to follow God by living Christ’s commandment of love, and learning how to build unity.
Now I find myself attending mass every day, but not in order to become Catholic. I know I cannot fully participate in the Catholic Mass, since I cannot receive communion as Catholics do. But I am there just to spend a moment of my day and dialogue with Him, and to be one family in prayer with the community. This atmosphere helps me to understand how I can have a better relationship with God and my neighbor.
I also began trusting more in God’s providence. In the past, while working as a call center agent, it was so important for me to be financially independent and secure. Here, I am learning a most valuable lesson, to trust in Providence, and to discover that joy when God is everything for us, and provides for all our needs.
I witness and experience an abundance of God’s providential love, not only in material things, but also and more importantly, in meeting and connecting with many persons who have become my brothers and sisters from different parts of our country and the world.
The going is not altogether easy; at times I find it difficult to understand His Will but living this life of unity makes it easier, as one goal is clear, and that is, to love God in every person that comes my way in every present moment, no matter what their nationality, culture, age, social status or religion.
Love is always creative, so the life of unity is dynamic, never boring. And there are many ways to love God and neighbor, even when one is just sanding wood in the Focolare carpentry shop, or writing articles as I work now in the New City Magazine office, or just cooking a meal for us at home and cleaning our small house with my brothers.
I can’t quite explain just yet why I chose God through the life of unity in the Focolare: it’s a discovery-in-progress, and I believe it’s all part of this Divine Adventure. But of this I am certain: today, I’m so free and happy as I have never been before in my life. I am also more open to what God wants for me, allowing Him to work on my timeline and collaborating with Him to fulfill his design for me, and his dream of unity for all creation and humanity.
