This is a birthday celebration for our movement: Faith and Light in Italy is turning twenty.
Those who were present at the very beginning may not have been certain that this small boat would sail for so long. Alongside the enthusiasm that accompanies first steps came fear and doubt—worry that we were deceiving ourselves, for these were the opening steps of a demanding and unfamiliar journey. Doors of homes began to open. People emerged, many of them shy and uncertain. We found ourselves together on the road, beginning to ask where we were headed.
"Together"—that was the name of our first newsletter, and it held the heart of what moved us. Because, as we see ever more clearly, Faith and Light does not ask one person to "give" to another, except as the most initial impulse, as an expression of a hunger for justice and peace. Faith and Light proposes to circulate a new spirit among all people, children all of us of God, and to educate ourselves together at the one school that truly teaches. Through a path of small thoughts, feelings, and daily gestures, Faith and Light aims high—very high. It shows us a dream, a promised land.
Together. No longer alone, no longer distant, no longer separated. Faith and Light seeks to draw people toward one another—to draw near those made different and distant by personal and family stories and destinies: the contented life of those for whom nearly everything comes easy and gilded, and the fearful life of those who must bear blows that seem to strike at their very humanity.
But who would overcome the selfishness, the blindness, the vulgarity that can hide beneath the gilded surface of comfort? Who would overcome the suspicion, resentment, envy, and despair that can harden us, or suffering that stretches too long? Who would protect us from grasping at simple, easy, consoling answers that in the end only strengthen evil instead of blunting its sting?
Now, with all humility, we can truly say that someone has taken us by the hand. We have been led—by the hand—on a long journey we can call a pilgrimage or an Exodus, using a biblical word that speaks to the searching and the struggle for liberation that has marked it. This journey will find its final fulfillment when we are truly together in God's love. But even now it can warm us and make our daily life a little more beautiful, a little more happy. We can say we have been led and guided out of "our land"—the land of habit, inertia, and sterility. We are on a journey!
We can say, with all humility and without any rhetoric, that the chance to glimpse the deepest truth of our lives, the compass that has guided us through this voyage, has come to the measure of the attention and listening we have been able to give to all those who showed themselves in need of help. When someone carries on his own shoulders the companion who cannot walk—to use a telling image—he gives that person the chance to see far and to guide.
This is why, in this journey we share, we can thank one another. This is why we can feel moved and happy about our twenty years.
This is why we can thank the Lord, who has always been, in Jesus, human and our brother, a pilgrim himself on earth, meeting those who wish to feel like brothers and accompanying them. He is happy and moved with them.
- Lucia Bertolini, 1995
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