I drove yesterday from Nova Gorica toward Ljubljana, where a hundred people were waiting for me—parents, their handicapped children, friends. The Faith and Light communities of Slovenia had gathered for a great celebration.
The landscape around me was the stuff of Northern European Christmas postcards: snow blanketing the sloped roofs, white pines, clearings where white rock jutted through here and there.
I could not help but think of Christmas drawing near.
I could not help but think of the brutal wars that land had seen—Italians and Austrians first, then Italians and Yugoslavs.
I could not help but think of this strange miracle our children are working, scattered across the world. Our children, so limited in intelligence by our measure. Yet through them, hatred falls away. Barriers crumble. Prejudice dies.
We gathered around the altar—strangers, different from one another.
We do not speak the same language, yet we understand each other. Our eyes say what words cannot.
In front of me sat a very young mother, cradling a girl of about six, gravely disabled. Throughout the Mass I could only look at that tormented small face. My heart was pounding. I wanted to tell her: "I know a girl like you, in Parma!..."
At the end of the service I watched this mother rise, make her way with her heavy burden to the microphone. She spoke in Slovenian for a few seconds. "...thank you, Mariangela, for coming to us..." a young man whispered to me. I heard nothing more.
Fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, friends—how can we not sing a Christmas carol together to thank our children, who push us step by step to live and to understand? Through their suffering, they carry the news the angels announced to the shepherds two thousand years ago: "Peace on earth to those of good will!"
—Mariangela Bertolini, 1985