December 2003

Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise. (Luke 3: 11)

During this season of Advent, our preparation time for Christmas, the person of John the Baptist is once again brought to the fore. He had been sent by God to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. To the crowds who came to hear him, he called for a profound change in their way of life: "Bear fruits worthy of repentance." (Luke 3: 8) And to those who asked: 'What then should we do?" (Luke 3: 10), he replied:

Whoever has two coats must share with anyone...

Why should I give to others what is mine? Since we were both created by God, the other person is my brother, or my sister; therefore, he or she is part of me. "I cannot hurt you without harming myself," Gandhi once said. We were created as a gift for one another, in the image of God who is Love. The divine law of love is written in the core of our being. When he came among us, Jesus revealed this very clearly in his new commandment: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." (John 13: 34) It is the 'law of heaven', the life of the Holy Trinity brought down on earth, the heart of the Gospel. Just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in full communion in heaven, to the point of being one (see John 17: 11), so too we on earth are truly ourselves to the extent that we live the reciprocity of love. And just as the Son says to the Father: "All I have is yours and all you have is mine' (John 17: 10), so too love is completely fulfilled among us when we share with one another not only spiritual goods, but also material ones.

Our neighbour's needs are the needs of all of us. Is someone out of work? I am too. Is someone's mother sick? I'll help her as if she were my own. Are other people hungry? It's as if I myself were hungry and I will try to find food for them as I would for myself.

This was the experience of the first Christians in Jerusalem: "Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common." (Acts 4: 32) A sharing or communion of goods was not obligatory, and yet they practised it intensely. As the apostle Paul explained, it is not that someone should go without in order to give relief to others, 'but it is a question of a fair balance'. (2 Cor. 8: 13)

St. Basil the Great says: "The bread you have stored away belongs to the hungry; the cloak you have put in your trunk belongs to the naked; the money you keep hidden belongs to the needy."

And St Augustine says: "The surplus of the rich belongs to the poor."

"Even the poor can help one another: those who can walk can help the lame, those who can see can help the blind; others can visit the sick."

Whoever has two coats must share with anyone...

Today we too can live like the early Christians. The Gospel is not a utopia. This is shown, for example, by the new ecclesial Movements that the Holy Spirit has brought about in the Church to help revive, in all its freshness, the Gospel radicalism of the early Christians, and to respond to the great challenges of today's society where there are such great injustices and many kinds of poverty.

I remember the early days of the Focolare Movement when the new charism filled our hearts with a very special love for the poor. Whenever we met them on the street, we took down their addresses in a notebook so that we could visit them and help them. They were Jesus: 'You did it to me'. (Matt. 25: 40) After visiting them, we invited them to dinner. We set the table with the best tablecloth, the best dishes and cutlery, the nicest food. In that first focolare, a focolarina sat beside a poor person, a focolarina beside a poor person, all around the table.

At one point we felt the Lord was asking us too to become poor in order to serve the poor and everyone else. So in a room in that first focolare house, each one put on a pile in the centre of the floor whatever she felt was extra to her needs: an overcoat, a pair of gloves, a hat, someone even gave a fur coat. Nowadays, in order to give to the poor, we also have businesses that provide employment and give a share of their profits!

But there is always a great deal still to do to help 'the poor'.

Whoever has two coats must share with anyone...

We have many riches that we can share, even though it may not seem so. We need to heighten our awareness and learn more about how to help concretely and to find the way of living real brotherhood. We have the warmth of our hearts to give, friendliness to show and joy to share. We can give our time, we can pray, we can share inner riches through the written or spoken word. At times we have things that we can put at the disposal of others, like bags, pens, books, money, homes and cars. We might hold on to many things, thinking that one day they could be useful. In the meantime there are people nearby who have urgent need of them.

Just as a plant absorbs from the soil only the amount of water it needs, so we should try to have only what is necessary. It is better every now and then to feel the lack of something; it is better to be a bit poor than to be a bit rich.

St Basil said, "If we were all content to have only what is necessary, and we gave our surplus to those in need, there would be neither rich nor poor."

Let's try, let's begin to live in this way. Jesus will not fail to send us the hundredfold, and then we will be able to go on giving. In the end, he will tell us that what we have given, to whoever it might have been, we gave to him.

Chiara Lubich