The words of Mary's Magnificat echoed in my heart during the funeral Mass for Rosa and her son Angelo. A great crowd filled the cathedral of Conselve, a small town near Padua, gathering in embrace around the two caskets before the altar—the home where Rosa and Angelo had lived.
The Christian and civil community came to honor two humble souls: a mother of eighty-six who had raised and guided her children with quiet courage, and a man of forty-two with Down syndrome whose simplicity, warmth, generosity of spirit, embraces, and native wit had captivated all who knew him.
As the flames took Rosa and her son, he drew her into an embrace that eternity itself will not dissolve. Their death reveals a love beyond naming. The crowd that filled that cathedral seemed to me a tribute to the smallness of which the Gospel speaks—a recognition of the silent goodness that, without fanfare, still makes our world beautiful and livable.
From those two caskets rose a message of fraternity and hope, of love and faithfulness. Angelo's disability, in particular, recalled values of life that those who call themselves "normal" risk forgetting or trampling underfoot. "I praise you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to the little ones." Yes, a "little one" like Angelo reminded us what matters most: love given and received, friendship, honesty, faithfulness, spontaneity, trust, faith, perseverance unto death.
And as I looked at those caskets, I found myself wondering: will the Church never canonize someone whom society regards with condescension—someone living with Down syndrome or Alzheimer's disease? Yet even if such people are never officially declared saints, they are saints before Jesus: "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." We can take heart, though, that the Church has recently raised to the altars a man who suffered mental illness—the father of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Saint Louis Martin, who in his final years was struck by senile dementia. The "discards" of humanity become cornerstones in the Church of God.
Father Carlo Vecchiato, 2018