On January 1st, the World Day of Peace, we offer a synthesis of a talk given by Chiara Lubich in 1997 for a Symposium at the United Nations in New York.

"...our Movement, aims at bringing peace into the world. (...) As it seeks to build unity among individuals, among groups and among nations; as it dreams of a future in which the world will be truly united, it is a force for peace in the world.

It proposes, promotes and builds peace not at high-level meetings, as the United Nations does, but among ordinary people of every language, race, nationality and religion.

But what is the bond of unity? What creates peace?

It is the love, love that lives deep in the heart of every human being. (...)   that love knows no form of discrimination.

(...) The art of loving also requires us to be first in loving, not waiting for the other person to love us first.

It requires us to love each person as ourselves. In the words of Gandhi: "You and I are one and the same thing. I cannot hurt you without harming myself."

This art means knowing how to "make ourselves one" with others; that is, to make their worries, their thoughts, their sufferings, their joys, our own.

(…) But if this love for others is lived together, it becomes mutual.

Christ, God the Father's Son par excellence, and every person's Brother, left a norm for humanity to live: mutual love. He knew how necessary this was for there to be peace and unity in the world, for all the world to be one family: a universal human family.

(...) Dedicating one's life to the cause of peace is a commitment not to be taken lightly! It calls for courage, knowing how to suffer. (...) Certainly, if more people accepted suffering out of love, the suffering that love requires, it would become the most powerful means of giving humanity its highest dignity; a dignity which lies in being not a collection of peoples living side by side and frequently in conflict with one another, but rather in being a single people, enriched by one another's diversity and safeguarding each one’s identity.

Excerpt from a talk of Chiara Lubich "Toward a Unity of Nations and a Unity of Peoples" at a Symposium held at the UN on May 28, 1997.

See the Video and full text on the Chiara Lubich Center website