von Michael HEINZ am 13.12.2020 - 20:16 Uhr | melden
Carissimo Fonte
I am not sure what language to select now, since all three, Italian, English German served as different communication channels between us, depending on circumstances. Since most our time together happened in the US of A, let me stay in English.
I just came home from our (together with my wife Christine) almost daily 10,000 step walk and find out, that you have reached already your final destination. There was quite a moment of intensive pain, mostly due to the fact, that I didn’t manage to greet you here in these 3 or 4 dimensions from face to face, but then – today is “gaudete”, the advent day that speaks of joy. Yes there is also profound joy in my heart, when thinking of you, that you arrived home.
All of the contributions I’ve read so far, they are all true, one more beautiful than the other.
We did get to know each other quite a bit in those early days in the focolare in New York, first in Queens, then in Brooklyn in the early 70s, me quite young, you quite mature, telling at the dinner table your experiences on how you applied the Gospel in your daily interactions in a radio repair shop, your first job. You really have been like a solid rock and a shining sun in the different circumstances of daily life.
Later on when I went to the Polytechnic Institute and I came home with logarithmic paper and exponential functions to understand and calculate exponential growth functions you tuned in on my wavelength and with your competence we talked about details at dinner. It didn’t finish there. We tried to apply that math to our own reality: The data of the growing number of mariapolis participants (the North American Mariapolis in Guelph had just to be split up into a US and a Canadian for following year due to too much growth), so there were those data of registrations, index cards about established contacts, Livng City subscribers etc. And we could try some forecast. We were sure that there was mathematical seriousness to our more and more detailed formula. Part of that formula was also something we called the JIM factor, i.e. the amount by which the encounters were characterized by the presence of Jesus In the Midst. The more that would be the case, the sooner the “ut omnes” would be achieved. By analogy (in the opposite direction) quite similar to the factor by which today’s virologists try to hamper the spread of the virus : least possible contacts.
And I remember you coming back from a meeting in Rome, where you had the opportunity to talk with Piero Pasolini , focolarino, physicist, and he told you : “I have come up with an even sooner date.”
So whatever that date maybe, my impression now is, even in the midst of of all the bad news that surrounds us, and notwithstanding the fact that the very early christians failed already back then in their forecast of Christ’s next coming, I still have almost the impression: it’s already there, I mean it’s already here, as long as we are in the present, i.e. the presence, then we are beyond time, in the realm where we are all one. Maybe in the midst of these quite unusual times we might simply become aware of this reality on a global level.
Dear Fonte, now that you see quite clearly, still more clearly, than you saw already, how things really are, I don’t mind if you help us understand down here whatever we need to know to be on that unbelievable track of God’s love that you have been moving on so well while still among us
Greetings Michael
