«I'll do fine going. I won't be a nuisance.... They won't think me unwelcome...» I told myself as I headed to a gathering of mothers I'd never met, and their handicapped children, organized in Rome by Foi et Lumière.
But even when I arrived, the unease didn't fade. I watched those mothers' eyes as they studied me, and I felt it too — the awkwardness.
It seemed to me they were asking: Why are you here?
What do you think you can do for us?
I looked at the small legs of a child bound to a wheelchair and thought of my own children's legs, always in motion. And I felt ashamed.
Then Mass began... the Gospel, Zaccheus small and curious in the tree. Jesus calls him down, goes to his house, Zaccheus transforms, he is saved. The priest explained: every child, every adult, "different" from the rest is Jesus's favorite, the one Jesus seeks out. But I thought: I am Zaccheus too, small in ideas, small in love. And the tree is the tree of fear, of selfishness, of excuses: what can I do? I'm not capable.... We stay up here watching. But Jesus says: «What are you doing up there? Come down. Come with me into life.»
And then I understood why I was there, why I had to be there.
Because if I call myself Christian, my mark of identity is to stand among those who suffer, among those who pay the price though innocent, among those whom a society that claims to be Christian pushes to the margins, rejects, doesn't even try to understand.
And these children are not only the children of their mothers and fathers. They are our children too; we share responsibility for their fate as much as their parents do. And if we cannot find them a rightful place, a life worthy of being lived, we have nothing left but to stand ashamed before them, without hiding, suffering for this as deeply as their parents do.
I am here also for my healthy children, because if I cannot bring them into this as well, if they don't understand and won't work toward it, then they will be the sick ones forever.
Maria Teresa, 1979