Claudio and Francesca have been friends of Fede e Luce for years. Today they marry.
They met through Fede e Luce, taking the first uncertain steps together toward a friendship that grew real and tested by time: camping trips, winter retreats, pizza nights, outings. With their friends who have handicaps, they built something honest: ready to do anything for someone having a hard day, ready to arrange a special evening in good company, but also ready to say no when demands became too much for everyone to thrive together.
This difficult balance bore fruit. The parish church where they grew up together is packed for the ten o'clock Sunday mass. Fede e Luce fills the front pews and the back; every face is joyful; every eye is fixed on Claudio and Francesca, seated beside the altar—she as beautiful as any bride, he as radiant as any groom. What strikes me is that everyone sings the hymns the Fede e Luce groups know by heart. The couple and their witnesses sing at full voice, as part of the congregation rather than at the center of it. They seem to say: we are here with you, speaking our promise before the One who brought us together.
The ceremony overflows with music, but also with that mysterious silence that speaks so well of hearts united in one spirit.
I think moments like this can only be lived when God makes himself present among his own.
We move then into the large, welcoming parish hall.
Long tables decorated with embroidered cloths, the kind reserved for great occasions; a generous buffet awaits us, adorned with exquisite flower arrangements.
The wedding celebration continues. As I watch the guests arrive, my heart swells and grows tender. Years ago I could not have imagined this would happen: young men and women with various visible handicaps, some in wheelchairs or with unsteady gaits, some with marked faces, entering radiant and at ease, alongside their parents, the couple's friends, young and old. Everyone knows each other by name.
Behind the tables, people begin serving with grace and genuine warmth, people unlike the usual waiters: friends and family of the couple's parents. Everything is so natural, so free from any trace of show. Here and there, small children trot about, at home, used since birth to our friends with handicaps.
I talk with the bride's grandmother, ninety-one years old, herself confined to a wheelchair for years now. I listen as she speaks—naturally, inevitably—of the bride's beauty. I don't notice at first that dancing has begun, not the usual paired dances but circle dances: the groom and bride lead, teach, show the steps and figures, and around them young and not-so-young, sturdy and more fragile alike, all together dance and make celebration, great celebration. I join them, try to follow the movements, a bit clumsy but full of joy, dancing to say with them my own happiness.
The Gospel passage about the wedding feast comes to mind: "Go out into the streets and invite everyone."
- M.M., 1990