Being united in the name of Jesus means both being united for Him—that is, to carry out his command (his will), and being united as He wants.
Therefore, when we come together even for reasons that are beautiful, even spiritual, but which are not in his name, He is not among us. For example, if I meet a friend in the name of friendship or in order to do some kind of work together or for entertainment, Jesus is not among us. If I were a consecrated religious leaving with another brother for a mission, Jesus would not yet be among us.
Jesus is among us when we are united in him, in his will, which is in Him himself, and his will is to love one another as he loved us.
The words of Jesus: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” must be considered together with “Love one another as I have loved you.” Therefore, the two of us, for example, are united in the name of Jesus if we love one another as he loved us.
Now, from this, you will understand how even we who live in the focolare do not always have Jesus in our midst. To have him among us in every moment, I would have to love you (presuming that it is just the two of us who live in a particular focolare) as he loved us, and be loved in return by you in the same way.
He loved us to the point of dying for us, and to the point of suffering even the abandonment.
Not always, or rarely, does love for our neighbor require such sacrifice. However, if the love that I must have for you (that action which is an expression of love) does not contain intentionally the way of loving with which He loved us, I do not love as He loves.
Similarly, if you do not love to this extent, then you are not loving in this way either, and so we are not united in his name and Jesus is not among us.
You see, for him to be present, this is how we must love one another. But you know that loving in this way means being “another Jesus.” Now, for him to be present among us, it is necessary that we already “be” Him beforehand.
But it is a “before” that is also an “after.” In fact, we are not perfectly him until he is in our midst.
When he is among us we are ONE and we are THREE, each equal to the one.
In essence, we can sense when he is present among us; when we feel that we are free, one, full of light and joy, when torrents of living water flow within us.
This happens when two are united in the name of Jesus. They must first be Jesus in order to have Him among them, but they are fully Jesus when they have Him among them.
When we are united and He is present, we are no longer two, but one. In fact, what I say in that moment, it is not I who say it, but I, Jesus, and you in me. And when you speak, it is not you, but you, Jesus, and I in you. We are a single Jesus and we are also distinct: I (with you in me and Jesus), you (with me in you and Jesus), and Jesus among us in whom there are you and I.
And His presence in our midst is a mystical presence among us.
And He is in the Father; therefore, in Him, the two of us are in the Father; and we participate in the life of the Trinity.
And the Trinitarian life flows freely in us, and as we love the other as He has loved us, we bring them to participate in this treasure of divine Life.
Or rather, they experience within themselves the treasure which they already had in God through Jesus because of Baptism and the other sacraments.
The novelty of this Light (a practical novelty) is that not only must we not be parasites of Jesus among us, but it is not even possible to do so, meaning to live comfortably off him passively awaiting his Light. In fact, He is not among us when we are not Him.
It is necessary, therefore, that we direct all our efforts toward being like Him, while still awaiting passively that He might come among us so that we can be Him fully.
Here lies the splendid simplicity of our Ideal which is also divine and mysterious. Living Christianity means being completely active and completely passive: the unity of opposites: God.
Chiara Lubich
Taken from the book Unity by Chiara Lubich pp. 69-72
