You, elderly woman, are living proof within this community that God has vast experience and endless patience:
"You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness!" (Psalm 86:15)
You, brother with a disability, are living proof that God came not to judge or condemn but to call and welcome; that God makes no distinction between people but loves them all equally, looking only at the heart.
You, mother, are living proof that God loves humankind as a mother loves her child:
"As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you, and you shall be comforted…" (Isaiah 66:13)
You, father, are living proof that God loves people as a father:
"I said, How gladly would I treat you as my sons and give you a pleasant land… I thought you would call me 'Father' and not turn away from me." (Jeremiah 3:19)
You, young man, are living proof that God's heart is forever young and his gaze forever turned toward the future:
"See, I am making all things new!" (Revelation 21:5)
You, young woman, are living proof that God smiles on humanity with tenderness in his heart and goodness in his eyes:
"Jesus looked at him and loved him…" (Mark 10:21)
You, boy or girl, are living proof that God loves life and celebration and prepares a feast for all.
Child, you find nothing strange in how all creatures dwell together: each one playing its part.
"The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11:6)
I, as a priest, am living proof that God always invites everyone to his table;
"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7)
A Christian community would lack something essential if it had no adults, no elderly, no young people, no children, and no brothers and sisters with disabilities.
Each one, in his or her own way, becomes for the others the hands, the eyes, the heart of God—who in the person of Christ loved us concretely with a human body, human hands, human eyes, a human heart.
"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body… Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it, each according to the part assigned." (1 Corinthians 12:12, 27)
Michel Charpentier
