«You have to be beaten really badly for someone to notice you," Eufemia says. "A little anxiety over your children doesn't cut it. Depression doesn't count. Getting up in a bad mood won't bring any Samaritan to your door." Eufemia Capobianco Giuliani is 74. She was one of the actors in a mime performance of the Good Samaritan parable that brought the Gospel reading to life during the online celebration of World Disability Day on December 3rd. You may recall the massive web conference organized by the Italian Bishops' Conference, which drew thousands of participants from Italy and abroad. Preparing the mime was one of the tasks assigned by the organizers to Faith and Light. They needed a group of people living together who could perform without masks.
The Faith and Light community in the South—known as "Mari and Vulcani" (Seas and Volcanoes), comprising about twenty communities across southern Italy—thought of a family from Monopoli, in the province of Bari: the Giulianis. Eufemia, the mother; Cosimo, the father; and their three adult children, Antonio (42), Daniela (44), and Manila (46), all living with intellectual disabilities. Eufemia has a rare gift for irony. Whether by divine grace or necessity—or both—she has learned to hold lightly a life as hard as the road of the man "going down from Jerusalem to Jericho." "When I saw Antonio lying there, beaten by his father," Eufemia says, "I thought of all the Samaritans we've met when the blows were so heavy we lay senseless on the ground. As I said, if you're not truly desperate, you won't ask for help, and others won't see you. I don't blame anyone. That's how life is. But when the robbers come, it happens just like in the Gospel. First you meet people who reject you, and their rejection pins you there on the ground. You have no strength, no will to get up. Then the Samaritan comes."
I ask her who this blessed Samaritan is. She thinks for a long time, smiling now and then. Because I press her—to make me happy, and because dinner is almost ready—she names a brother-in-law, a retired Fiat executive from Turin who has always been generous with them. But it's clear that *the* answer isn't coming to her. So she tells me a story instead.
Five years before marrying Cosimo, while they were still engaged, she went to Lourdes as a charity volunteer. The experience shook her so deeply that when she came home, she wanted to abandon everything—especially the engagement. Her calling was to help the sick. "But it turned out differently," Eufemia smiles. "My mission came home with me. No, there isn't just one Samaritan. There have been many. Some did very concrete things for us—like Unitalsi. Others, like Faith and Light, have always been there and always will be, a kind of life jacket you inflate when you need it. Look," she says, warming to the subject, "I can't tell you who the Samaritan is. But I see clearly that this mime has a director's hand in it. Do you know Mother Teresa's saying about the pencil? I think about it every day of my life. I thought about it when I wanted to go one way and my husband, or my children, or circumstances blocked me. I thought about it a thousand times when things didn't go the way I wanted. 'I am a little pencil in his hands. The pencil has nothing to do with it all. The pencil has only to be used.' That mime we performed—and the kids were so happy in the end—reminded me of my life. The actors could have been them or others; it didn't matter. But the director knew the plot, and I had to trust him."
Now Eufemia lowers her voice. "My ending is coming. But not for my children. They're still young. So, dear director, if you don't want to ruin the whole film, you'd better think about them when we're gone. This pencil is running out, and the mark it makes is fainter and fainter. Now it's your turn."