“The Resurrection of Rome” is one of Chiara Lubich’s most famous writings and was the fruit of a significant experience. The text marks a turning point in her experience in 1949: her return to Rome, and therefore, to normal life, which was lived as bringing light and life into daily routine and bearing fruit in a renewal not only of one’s personal existence but of society. The author’s way of looking at Rome means, in fact, a way of looking at all the cities of the world.

[October 1949]

If I look at this city of Rome as it is, my Ideal seems far away. It appears to me as distant as the days in which the saints and martyrs illuminated everything around them with that eternal light which reached even the walls of these monuments that still stand in witness of the love that united the first Christians.

With blatant contrast, today’s world, with all its filth and vanities, dominates this city’s streets and, even more so, the hidden recesses of every home where anger, every kind of sin and agitation lurk.

I would say my Ideal was a utopia if I did not think of Him, who also saw a world like this one. He was surrounded by it and, at the end of his life, appeared to be swept up by it, overcome by evil.

He, too, gazed upon the crowds around him whom he loved as himself, whom he created. He wanted to forge the bonds that would unite them to him, like children to a father, and unite them to one another as brothers and sisters.

He came down to reunite us as a family: to make us all one.

He came with words filled with Fire and Truth that burned through the accumulation of vanities that cover the life of the Eternal that lives in every person and that passes among them. And yet, notwithstanding, people, many people, though understanding, did not want to understand and remained with lifeless eyes because their souls were in darkness.

And all this because he made them free.

He who descended from heaven to earth could have resurrected them all with a single glance. But, because they had been created in the image and likeness of God, he had to let them experience the joy of freely conquering heaven. Eternity was at stake. They would have the opportunity to live as children of God for all eternity, like God, as creators of their own happiness (because participants in the omnipotence of God).

He looked at the world as I see it now, but he did not doubt.

Unsatisfied and sad as he watched everything going to ruin, he responded by praying at night to the heavens above and the heaven within, there where the Trinity lived, the true Being, everything, while outside along the streets, there was only emptiness that passes.

And I, too, follow this example so as to never separate myself from the Eternal, from the Uncreated, which is the root of creation and therefore, the Life of all, in order to believe in the ultimate victory of Light over darkness.

I pass through Rome, and I do not want to look at it. I look at the world within me, and I cling to all that has being and value. I become completely one with the Trinity that lives in my soul, allowing myself to be enlightened by its eternal Light and filled with its heaven. I live in that heaven populated by the angels and saints who, not being constrained by the limits of time and space, can all convene in a unity of love with the Three in my humble being.

And I make contact with the Fire, that having invaded the depths of my humanity given to me by God, makes me another Christ, another God-Man by participation. Thus, my humanity merges with the divine, and my eyes are no longer lifeless. Instead, through the pupil, which is the emptiness of my soul through which all the Light within me passes (if I let God live in me), I look at the world and everything in it. But it is no longer I; it is Christ in me who looks at the world and desires to make the blind see, the mute speak, and the crippled walk. They are those blinded to the vision of God living within and outside them; mute to the Word of God that also speaks within them and that could be communicated to others, reawakening the Truth in them. They are the crippled who are unable to move, because they ignore the divine will that, from the depths of their hearts, spurs them on to an eternal motion that is eternal Love, for when we transmit Fire, we are set ablaze.

Therefore, opening my eyes once again to the world outside, I see humanity with the eyes of God who believes all things because he is Love.

I see and I discover my same Light in others, the true Reality of myself, my true self in them (perhaps hidden or secretly camouflaged out of shame). And, having found myself, I reunite myself to me, resurrecting myself in my brother or sister – because Love is Life.

Jesus is resurrected in them, another Christ, another God-Man, the manifestation here on earth of the Father’s goodness and the Eye of God on humanity. Thus, I extend the Christ in me to my brother or sister, and I form a living and complete cell of the Mystical Body of Christ: a living cell, a hearth of God that possesses Fire and Light, which must be communicated.

It is God who makes two persons one by placing himself third, as the relationship between them: Jesus among us.

Thus, love circulates and naturally carries with it (because of its innate law of communion), like a blazing river, all that the two possess to the point that all their material and spiritual goods are held in common.

And this gives concrete and outward witness to a love that is unitive, to true love, the love that comes from the Trinity.

Therefore, the complete Christ lives again in both persons, in each one and among us.

He, the God-Man, in the most varied human expressions imbued with the divine, placed at the service of the eternal design: God concerned with his kingdom, ruler of all, distributor of every good thing to all his children like a father who shows no preferences.

And I think that if I allow God to live in me, and if I allow him to love himself in those around me, he would discover himself in many of them, and many eyes would light up with his Light: a tangible sign that he reigns in them.

And his Fire, which destroys everything in the service of eternal Love, would spread like lightning throughout Rome, resurrecting Christians there and making this era cold because atheist, the era of Fire, the era of God.

But it is important that we have the courage not to waste too much time in other activities that simply reawaken a little Christianity, trying to echo past glories; or at least, we should not give them the same priority.

We need to allow God to be reborn within us and keep him alive. We need to make him overflow onto others like torrents of Life and resurrect the dead.

And keep him alive among us by loving one another (and to love, it is not necessary to make a lot of noise: love is dying to ourselves – and death is silence – and life in God – and God is the silence that speaks).

So everything is renewed: politics and art, school and religion, private life and entertainment. Everything.

The presence of God in us is not like a crucifix that hangs on the wall of a classroom as nothing more than a talisman. He lives in us – if we let him live – as the legislator of every human and divine law, since he made them all. And from the most intimate recesses of our being, he dictates them one by one. He, the eternal Teacher, teaches us what is eternal and what is passing, and gives value to everything.

But only those who let Christ live in them, and therefore, living in those around them, can understand this. Because life is love, and if it does not circulate, it does not live.

Jesus needs to be resurrected in the Eternal City and introduced everywhere. He is Life, the fullness of Life. He is not just a religious event… This attempt to separate him from the entirety of our lives is a practical heresy of today’s world. It subjects men and women to something that is beneath them and relegates God the Father far from his children.

No, he is the Man, the perfect man, who sums up and contains all men and women, and every truth and inspiration that they may feel in order to raise themselves to their proper place.

Therefore, the one who has found this Man has found the solution to every problem, be it human or divine. It is enough to love him.

Chiara Lubich

(Resurrezione di Roma, edited by Hubertus Blaumeiser and Anna Maria Rossi, Cittá Nuova, Rome 2017)