As the world reflects on the first hundred days of Pope Leo’s pontificate, many have pointed to the Augustinian imprint that already shapes his words and gestures. His simple declaration in his first greeting on 8 May 2025—“I am a son of St Augustine, an Augustinian…”—signalled how deeply his new ministry is rooted in that tradition of unity, charity, and truth. Commentators have noted that these same values are vital for the Church today as it continues the synodal journey and seeks to strengthen communion within itself and with the world. In this context, the following reflection by Fr Fabio Ciardi takes on a special timeliness. He traces the profound spiritual affinity between St Augustine and Chiara Lubich, foundress of the Focolare Movement, whose writings and lived experience reveal a harmony with Augustine’s vision. Fr Ciardi shows how, without having studied Augustine directly, Chiara nevertheless embodied what a great Augustinian scholar, Fr Agostino Trapé, called a “truly Augustinian” spirituality—one centred on community, on charity, and on the discovery of God within.

While waiting for the election of the new pope, I tried to imagine what name he might take. I would have liked “Augustine,” because I think that the Church needs greater unity within itself, to be animated by charity and to continue the synodal journey, open to the world, involving everyone in unity and charity. The new pope chose another name… but he is an Augustinian as he immediately declared in his first greeting on 8 May 2025: “I am a son of St Augustine, an Augustinian…”

Pope Leo is not just any Augustinian—he was Prior General of the Order of St Augustine for 12 years, from 2001 to 2013. This is far more than I could have imagined when thinking of a pope who might have been called “Augustine”!

St Augustine, 16 centuries later, continues to inspire, as he has done throughout the history of the Church, beginning with St Benedict right up to today. I wrote an article about this for Nuova Umanità. At the end, I showed how St Augustine also inspired Chiara Lubich, whose spirituality, according to a great scholar of Augustine could be perceived as “truly Augustinian.”

As Prior General of the Augustinian Order, Council Father and founder of the Patristic Institute Augustinianum, Fr Agostino Trapé conceived the bold idea of publishing the Opera Omnia of St Augustine in a bilingual Latin–Italian edition, which comprises 68 volumes with introductions which are also genuine monographic studies. The publication was entrusted to the Città Nuova publishing house. During a meeting with one of the editors, Carmelo Failla, Fr Trapé expressed his view of Chiara Lubich and the Focolare Movement, noting “the very special harmony I discovered there [in Lubich’s writings] with Augustine’s spirituality.” He even said: “Tell Chiara Lubich: tell her that she is truly Augustinian—in the sense that all the themes central to Augustine are also central here in these writings. And without her, certainly, having studied St Augustine—which is a sign of an authentic spiritual experience.” In Chiara’s writings, three points struck him in particular: “the reference—so dear to Augustine—to the life of the first Christian community; charity, as central here as in Augustine; and then: ‘God—everything in life,’ so prominent and dominant.”

Informed of this appreciation from Fr Trapé, Chiara Lubich wrote to him the next day, 22^nd September 1965: “So: the General of the Augustinians tells me… Augustinian! There must be something true in this! Thank you, Father—not, of course, for me, but for the spirituality that inspires our Movement. Thank you in the name of the Movement, which from now on will have a new (though always much-loved) protector in St Augustine.”

Chiara’s first encounter with Augustine perhaps dates back to her studies at Teacher Training School, when, in her search for truth, she was struck by the Augustinian phrase “In interiore homine habitat veritas”—“Truth dwells in the inner person”—a phrase that regularly appears in her writings and talks. We find an echo of it in a 1943 letter: “Go back within yourself: seek God, your God, the One who lives in you! If you only knew whom you carry within you! If you left everything for him…”—which ends with a direct reference to the Confessions: “May your youth not slip away so that, amid the sobs of a wasted life, you have to say with St Augustine: ‘Late have I loved you! Late have I loved you, Beauty ever ancient, ever new!’ No! (…) Now I love you, my God, my All!” The first focolarine looked with admiration at the group St Augustine formed with his disciples, to the point of saying: “We were therefore in unison with St Augustine.”

From the awareness of “God within” came the repeated invitation to “listen to that voice”—the voice of the Holy Spirit, the Word of the Word that resounds within and is amplified by living in love: “This charity,” she wrote on 8^th April 1986, “also enlarged within us what we called ‘that voice.’ The Word lived out amplified it like a loudspeaker, so that it could be clearly distinguished even among the thousand noises of the world.”

Augustine’s most famous sayings, also appear in her writings, such as: “Our heart is restless until it rests in You” and “Lord, let me know myself, let me know You.”

In 1965, she began reading Augustine’s commentary on John, just published by Città Nuova: “I like it very much. (…) What a gift these sermons of Augustine are! What a colossus this saint is! Few things have brought such supernatural happiness to my soul.” As she read on, she often expressed her wonder and joy: “St Augustine is majestic in commenting on this passage—more than majestic.”

In 1970, she took up again a commentary on chapter 17 of John (homilies 104–111). Beginning on 29^th  June 1970, she read it until 22 July. First she read the Gospel passage, then she meditated on it and finally she read Augustine’s commentary. To her surprise and joy, she always found a harmony between what she had understood and what the Church Father said, even though he continued to suggest new depths to her: “We are therefore in unison with Augustine.”

On 14^th  July, when she reached verse 21, she no longer felt the same harmony with Augustine’s commentary: “This losing the friendship with Augustine along the way, precisely in that which was dearest to me, saddened me. I had been too deluded in thinking that this true colossus—and I still see him as such, because he is—was almost infallible in all his interpretations.” Their paths diverged because Augustine read the Gospel in the context of his own time: in the face of heresy, one had to affirm the divinity of the Word and His equality with the Father, while Chiara read it from the perspective of her own charism—unity.

In her talks on spirituality, she often cited Augustine: his doctrine on the Eucharist, the will of God, ecclesiology… Yet the deep harmony always remained on the themes of charity and unity. “And above all,” we read in one of her conversations, “let us think of St Augustine, for whom mutual love and unity had the supreme value. Indeed, it is to him that we feel particularly close.” She liked to quote the beginning of the Rule: “The essential reason why you have gathered together is that you may live in harmony in the house, having one mind and one heart intent upon God.”

She also embraced Augustine’s description of the Church, comparing it to what was lived in the Mariapolis (summer meetings of the Focolare Movement): “Of it, a splendid flower of the Church—born upon, for, and in the new commandment of Jesus—we thought we could repeat what Augustine said of the Church: ‘What Babel scattered, the Church gathers; from one tongue came many; do not marvel: pride has done this. Many tongues become one; do not marvel: love has done this.’”

The Church, from its very foundation, was charity, was communion—Augustine says that it consists in “the communion of the whole world.” “It seemed to me that our Movementcould be given a name—the name that Augustine often gave to his Church: Charity.”

Thinking of the life of communion with those with whom she lived in the focolare, she found another point of affinity with Augustinian friendship and loved to quote the Confessions: “Conversations and laughter together, the exchange of friendly acts, the reading together of pleasant books, the sharing of amusements—sometimes frivolous, sometimes dignified—the occasional disagreements without rancour, as of a person with themselves and the more frequent agreements, seasoned by these rare disagreements; each of us being now the teacher, now the pupil of the other; the impatient longing for the return of those absent, the warm welcomes of those returning. These and similar tokens of hearts in love with one another, expressed by the mouth, the tongue, the eyes and by countless delightful gestures, are, I would say, the fuel for the flame that melts souls together and makes one out of many.”

The profound theological unity knew how to unite the equally profound aspect of human friendship in all its concreteness.

Augustine can still continue to inspire.

Thursday, 7 August 2025, https://fabiociardi.blogspot.com/2025/08/chiara-lubich-agostiniana.html