06/01/2007

Inspired by the Egidio Community

BACK IN NOVEMBER, the students and faculty at St. John�s University had a marvelous opportunity to come in contact with a community that is profoundly Catholic and is having a profound impact on promoting peace in the world. It was for me, and I believe for others, an experience of grace. There is so much wrong with the world that we can have many experiences that can easily lead to discouragement and disillusionment. This experience of the Egidio Community was the opposite.

The occasion for its members to be at St. John�s Jamaica campus was the �Languages for Peace International Conference.� My friend, Professor Angelina Sacca, one of the great teachers I have met in my life, was one of the organizers. Angelina, who teaches Italian at St. John�s, was largely responsible for bringing Mario Marazzitti to deliver the keynote address, titled �Languages for Peace.� He is one of the founders of the Community of Egidio and for more than 20 years he has been its spokesperson.

Prior to attending the conference, I knew very little about Egidio but everything I learned about it impressed me. Egidio is a movement of lay people dedicated to communicating and living out the Gospel through prayer, solidarity with the poor, and service to peace. The movement began in 1966 among a group of teenagers in Rome. These young people were very much influenced by the Second Vatican Council. What is now known as Egidio began as these teens gathered regularly to pray. This experience eventually moved them to identify with the poor, to reach out ecumenically to members of other religions and to work for peace. They met to pray in a small church named Sant�Egidio in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. When the time came to name their group, they picked the name of the saint. What started very small has spread. Rome is where the central office of the community is but there are communities in 70 countries.

That a group with such an apparently unremarkable beginning should have spread and had such an impact in the world is amazing. Egidio has created a model AIDS prevention treatment program that has been copied throughout Africa and, in the opinion of the Heads of State of the African Union, this program along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are the only two �success� stories in battling AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Community became famous worldwide for its mediation efforts to end the civil war in Mozambique after 16 years of fighting. That fighting had led to the death of 16 million people. Besides being right at the heart of the peace process in Africa, Egidio has built hospitals in Africa and provided food, schooling, legal aid and shelter to thousands in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It also provides care for the aged in Europe and America.

Though I was impressed with just about everything I learned about Egidio, I suppose what impressed me most was the community�s commitment to prayer. The following is a statement describing how important prayer is to this movement for peace in the world:

�The heart of the life of every Sant�Egidio community is common and personal prayer. Indeed, the first �work� of the Community of Sant�Egidio is prayer, in which we listen and respond to the Word of God. Praying with Scripture is how the Community responds to Jesus� invitation to discipleship. Prayer is the source from which spring all of the Community�s other activities. Prayer is the beginning of a life lived for others, a life given freely and joyfully in love and service to all men and women, especially the poor.�

When I heard how Egidio started, I thought of the way that members of The Catholic Worker movement became involved in various apostolates. In her autobiography, �The Long Loneliness,� Dorothy Day says that the various apostolates, such as identifying with the poor, opposing war and capital punishment, being involved in the liturgical movement, and promoting Catholic intellectual life, came about because people sat around a kitchen table and talked to one another about the problems in the world. That such wonderful apostolates can come into existence because a small group of Christians get together to talk and pray should be great encouragement to anyone involved in ministry. Egidio can be sign to all of us that the Holy Spirit is present, inspiring people, leading people to reach out to help others. What people could never do on their own becomes possible because of the presence of the Spirit of Love.

Robert Lauder