I find myself alone, face to face with a handicapped boy: I chose this moment deliberately, a moment I had long anticipated and dreaded. In him, only his eyes speak. And each time I stand before those eyes, I discover how inadequate and helpless I am. But there is no escape now. Almost without realizing it, I begin to talk.
Words surface at first tentatively, then with growing intensity. In those eyes I see—I feel—a response that fills me with wonder, because it carries the force of an announcement.
I believe that moment is irreplaceable. Yet I would find it again, fresh and whole, during a Fede e Luce gathering last November in Milan.
In those days I was preparing with the other catechists for the initiation journey I would share that year with a new group of young people. I imagined our first meetings: full of creative enthusiasm, warm with welcome. Instead, each time I feel as though I am reaching into emptiness.
Among these children, some bear the marks of an exhausting restlessness, rooted always in a family torn apart or tearing itself apart.
Others seem marked by a senseless cruelty, bewilderingly disconnected from even the most contradictory messages.
"Normal" children, overfed and over-vitamined, yet continuously trapped in an endless cascade of demands. All of it wrapped in unbearable frenzy and a disappointing inability to focus.
I face a handicap more unjust and painful than any other: these children are exposed, defenseless, to a life entirely oriented toward the most exasperating efficiency—and they are not to blame for these afflictions.
More than once I have been tempted to walk away.
Now, months later, I find myself indebted to "my" children. Perhaps what I wanted from them above all was their tenderness. Instead, they ask of me a more costly willingness to be present.
Adele Ghielmi (catechist in Milan), 1980