Only a few months have passed since my first encounter with Faith and Light, yet when I look back to trace the circumstances and motivations that brought it about, I find myself uncertain. I might say it happened "by chance"—a simple convergence: a Faith and Light community in Rome (St. Valentine's) seeking a spiritual assistant, and a seminary student in the city who, hearing of the need, decided to inquire what it was all about.
I knew nothing of Faith and Light before. I was familiar with Jean Vanier's name and a few of his writings, but little else. When they first explained it to me—the young people, the families, the volunteers—what convinced me to say yes was not a desire for volunteer work, but rather a hunger to meet people living daily with disability and to witness how faith transforms that reality.
Several months into this beginning, that same hunger to listen and learn still accompanies me. I believe this stance has been essential not only in approaching something I knew little about, but also in protecting me from the helplessness and awkwardness that likely come with any first encounter.
Once I accepted my own poverty, something surprising happened. In simple contact with the young people, many of the barriers that usually corrupt relationships between "normal" people simply fell away. Communication became at once more elementary and more authentic. Gestures that elsewhere seem trivial revealed themselves as powerful and full of meaning. And there were moments when insights from the young people left me speechless—such depth in their words. As I came to know their families, I found people whose daily struggle and suffering had produced remarkable human maturity and solidity. Elsewhere I have seen similar circumstances yield only resignation and bitterness. Here, I believe, the difference lies in the climate of fraternity and shared life that pervades Faith and Light. The volunteers—the "friends"—contribute greatly to this atmosphere through their generous presence. In an age that seems dominated by indifference toward God, I have found in Faith and Light a profound spiritual sensitivity. I have heard beautiful testimonies of faith, and I have also listened to difficult questions, to doubts and restlessness expressed sometimes only in a glance.
As I have followed Faith and Light's path, I have paused often to reflect on what "joy" means—a word I speak with some hesitation, wary of adding to the many ways it is already misused. The joy here is not an escape from daily hardship or a deliberate forgetting of problems. Rather, it is the capacity to recognize and welcome with gratitude what is essential, to share in simplicity and gladness what one is and what one has, to "bear one another's burdens" in a way that transforms an unbearable weight into the "light yoke" that Jesus asks his disciples to take upon themselves.
When one looks with eyes of faith at these people walking together, one does not stop at the human observation that all of them, in their different ways, benefit from it. Instead, one discerns in their communion a sign of the living presence of the risen Christ. The heart of this presence, radiating through all who belong to Faith and Light, is precisely these young people—these "little ones" with whom Jesus himself identifies.
Being a priest within Faith and Light represents for me both a challenge and a help to living my ministry. A challenge because the priest is a figure around whom many positive expectations gather, at various levels. Without letting myself be overwhelmed by these expectations, I try to be a companion on the path who, when called for, bears a special word—one whose strength and authority come not from me, but from Another, who is worthy of trust. I hope to unite with this word a corresponding witness of life. My contact with the young people, their families, and the volunteers is also a great gift to my ministry. It keeps alive and clear in me the face of Christ, which so easily becomes clouded or distorted by countless trivial things.
I realize that what I have written here about my experience in Faith and Light may not be a true "testimony" in the proper sense. Rather, these are early impressions from a journey barely begun—yet one in which I already glimpse great possibilities for human and spiritual growth. This moves me to recommend it to anyone, especially young people, who wishes to break through the wall of superficiality and see human life with fresh eyes.
Don Antonino, 2011
