Loving the least

   In an early Mariapolis, a participant shared an interesting experience. “It was Good Friday,” he said, “and my barkada decided, as we usually do during funerals, to celebrate by eating a goat. The others wanted to steal it though, as we are poor. Having come to know the ideal of unity, I could not agree. I tried to explain to them that it was not the right thing to do, that Jesus would see us, etc. One of them replied: ‘We will go after 3 p.m., when he is dead so he will not see us!’ I could not argue anymore and so when the set time came, I arrived at the appointment with my wife. ‘Why did you bring your wife?’ they said. ‘Well,’ I answered, ‘if we are going to celebrate, I want my wife with me. But first let’s go to greet some families I know. So together we visited the houses of some friends. Every one of them offered us food, and in the end, there was no longer any need to steal a goat. ‘You see?’ I told my friends, ‘in order to eat we don’t need to steal. We have but to love!’”
   This story can well summarize the impact of the spirituality of unity on social problems. In order to help people reacquire their dignity, we can’t just teach them what’s wrong, or give them material food, we also have to show how love can offer a long-term solution to human problems.
   
   When Carlo De Gasperi arrived in the Philippines in 1967, he didn’t know what to expect. He had to look for work, and Cengia got the idea of setting up a social project for the poor. So Carlo started to scout for a place where to start a carpentry shop. It was a makeshift kind of a shop, and there were no clients, no experience, and no workers. Carlo himself was not a carpenter. He had a great faith, though. One day a German lady came to them. She needed a small job done, which Carlo delivered with much love. This person felt that there was a difference about his shop. So she told her friends… her rich friends, and the carpentry’s business took off.
   After 40 years the Focolare Carpentry shop in Cainta, Rizal now employs more than 120 people. “We never lacked work,” Carlo says, “even during hard times. The secret? I used to go to Church everyday and tell our Lady: ‘This is your work, so if you want us to go ahead, send me some clients.’ Another very important aspect, both in the relationship with the workers and the clients, has always been to love the person we were dealing with. This was the greatest gift we could offer them. Once you know that God is love, everything follows. That’s why many of the workers are still with us, and so the clients have multiplied. Later on we were even able to build houses for our workers, always with the help of God’s providence.”

   The Carpentry Shop is one of many projects that has developed along the years. First though was the communion of goods between rich and poor as in the early Christian community. But this was not enough. Still so many were asking for help that imagination and faith in God had to come to the rescue.
  This is exactly how Bukas Palad Center came to life. Chiara had sent a letter to our young people, the Gen, to do something in order to express their love for their own people. And so the Gen started to gather clothes and other things they could put together which they then sold in a rummage sale, raising 2,500 pesos. But the most important thing for them was to live the Gospel, to offer the true gift, that was, the love of God for the poor. “We never lacked anything we needed from that time,” says Irene de los Angeles, for many years coordinator of Bukas Palad, “because providence always arrived in time. We had but to start living the Gospel. When something we needed did not come, we told ourselves: Maybe we have to raise the ‘temperature’ of mutual love among us… We would do so and the providence would come.”
   Today Bukas Palad has centers in Manila, Cebu, Davao, La Union and Tagaytay, and together with the Pag-asa Social Center in Tagaytay, they take care of thousands of children and their families, providing them livelihood, dental care, school tuition, etc.

   But there are other people in the Focolare particularly involved in social projects: the Volunteers. Their specific characteristic is to renew the structures of society by living out the Gospel, and they do so in every environment. Since the early seventies, for instance, they have been visiting inmates in different prisons. They continue to do so today, with even greater commitment. “Soon,” one of the inmates in Bilibid Prison recently shared, “I will be released from prison, but I’m afraid, because here I have come to know God, the life of unity, and I’m not sure I will be able to be faithful once outside. I actually wanted to ask for an extension of my stay…”

   In many hospitals around the Philippines, instead, SINAG Hospital Volunteers, started by a Volunteer in Manila, have been providing care to patients of all kinds, who otherwise would have been left alone. Benjamin Borja having injured his leg while working on the farm, dragged himself to a provincial doctor, but nothing could be done for him. As a result, his grandmother and his wife both abandoned him. Luckily a friend then brought him to Manila, where Benjamin had his leg amputated. Soon after, his friend had to return home. Benjamin felt quite bitter and abandoned, especially after he came to know that if his wife had helped him immediately, he would have been able to save his leg. Three days after his leg was amputated, a SINAG volunteer came to see him. SINAG’s task is simple: helping out those whom the hospital personnel cannot reach. This means bringing service and comfort to patients, especially to the lonely and needy. In Benjamin’s case it meant first of all providing him with clothes and a toothbrush, then also with medicines. Daily visits brought back joy to the heart of Benjamin. After he was discharged, SINAG volunteers helped him find a place in a home for handicapped people, where he could also earn a living. He was quite cheerful, promising he would be back in the hospital for an artificial leg that SINAG was trying to obtain for him.
   This may seem too good to be true, but it’s not. It is the amazing fruit of God’s love in people who have made a commitment to love him in their most needy neighbors. In them is an inner motivation to build a civilization of love where sick people are no longer just numbers, but precious human beings.