By Matters India reporter
Mumbai: Creating a ripple effect of love must continue on daily basis, says a Focolare movement member.
Last November, the Focolare movement launched “Deeds that say I love,” project in Mumbai creating awareness among people to help poor people.
“Through this project, ‘Deeds that say I love,’ we attempted to spread this message and encourage those around us to actively do more acts of love and share these with us. The team then shared the experiences that reached us over social media, tagging Pope Francis as well. We found that this encouraged others to do the same, creating a ripple effect of love,” Dyanne Coelho of Focolare moment told MattersIndia.
Pope Francis declared Nov 19, 2017, as World Day of the Poor saying “Let’s love not with words, but with deeds.”
“We thought that we must join in and contribute in some concrete way. There are several ways one can categorize the ‘poor’, but we realize that not only the economically backward are the poor. The poor also comprise the poor of heart, those who do not receive love and affection, those filled with anger and sadness, and even the wealthy who do not feel the power of God,” Coelho added.
Making the world a better, happier place for one’s neighbors and oneself is always the ultimate goal, she said, adding, “Every experience that we received was a gesture that made someone smile. More often than not, that someone was a complete stranger to the person reaching out, which made it doubly beautiful. We then compiled all of these experiences into a little scrapbook as a gift to the Pontiff and have sent it across to him. This is our small way of declaring our commitment to continue living in love.”
While at first, the organizing team realized people did not want to share their experiences to avoid publicly displaying acts of kindness, soon it realized that the sharing of these experiences with just initials or anonymously actually encouraged more persons to perform acts of love and participate in this spiritually rich endeavor, she added.
“It was also quite an experience for the team working on this; receiving an experience early in the morning also encouraged us to try and be better persons during the day. To sum, the goal we set at the beginning of the project was well achieved and we continue to live and love in the same way,” Coelho said.
The Focolare movement is an international organization that promotes the ideals of unity and universal brotherhood among all people regardless of religion and culture, founded in 1943 by Chiara Lubich.
The Focolare movement has been in India since 1980 and today has communities and centers in Bangalore, Goa, Darjeeling, New Delhi, which promote activities and meetings for adults, families and young people.