Living City • February 2017 • Messages

Thank you for your January issue, with its experiences on overcoming the gaps in our lives, and especially for its strong essay "Words matter," which reflects on the difficulties we all have in achieving real dialogue.

We all need to take more care with the words we use – especially with people we don't agree with. The comments on the rhetoric of the recent campaign are insightful and fair, and help us follow the author's example in reflecting on our own use of language and listening skills.

I think you did a great job with the January issue, talking about the political situation. Very good job with an almost impossible task, done with bravery and much charity! So glad to see it and hope it brings out a lot of good.

We have just renewed some gift subscriptions because we have great faith in Living City. We just love the articles, big and small. Such creativity and diversity. Each issue has its own character, different from the last but always with the same focus on living the spirituality of unity, in good times and not so good times.

I just read the article on hospitality, "From stranger to guest" in the December issue of Living City. It was great. I am bringing it to my stewardship meeting next week. We are not selling Jesus. We are welcoming people into our celebration of life with him. Go slow. Be awed. Grant grace. Live Truth. Give Thanks. Rejoice.

The article "We've come a long way" in the December issue stimulated me to share what might have been a cheerful page in my autobiography, describing a month's visit to Sweden I made in July 1949 as a guest of Bishop Knut Ansgar Nelson who was a Dane, converted from the Lutheran Church and my spiritual mentor in my teens.

He was appointed auxiliary to the Apostolic Vicar of Sweden, which was not a diocese yet, and the whole territory, twice as large as Italy, had only 1,600 Catholics.

I remember visiting Vadstena, where St. Bridget of Sweden founded the first monastery of her Bridgettine Order.

About 70 years have passed since my journey, not a long period for changes in church history. Bishop Nelson would scarcely have believed that in such a short time a high official of the Lutheran Church would publicly engage in common prayers with the pope himself on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 theses! He would find this change impossible without divine intervention.

To follow Pope Francis' encouragement on getting to know other denominations, I recommend everyone a summer trip to Sweden!

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