These pages are a memory for those who were at Lourdes and a witness for those who were not.
Fourteen thousand people—those with intellectual disabilities, parents, and friends—came to Lourdes for Holy Week 1991. Most came from Western and Eastern Europe, and from other continents as well. Many came at great cost, through sacrifice and difficult circumstances. They came to experience joy and to bear witness to the unity of Christians and of humanity: unity gathered around the "smallest" in the spirit of the Beatitudes, according to God's word. They came to Lourdes because Faith and Light had been born there twenty years earlier, and because it is the shrine of that woman who, two thousand years before, had said Yes to a son so different from the rest, so hard to understand, already marked for great suffering. That Yes which many parents continue to say, every day, no matter what, trusting in God's promise.
So that each person has a place
This pilgrimage carries many meanings, but I believe the first is this: it reveals to us that the person with intellectual disability is profoundly precious and carries a special gift to offer to the Church and the world. Unfortunately, few discover it. At Faith and Light and at L'Arche we discover that God has chosen what the world calls foolish, chosen the weakest, the humblest, to confound the strong, the rich, the powerful.
The danger of our world is to flee suffering, to live in illusion and fantasy. The Gospel calls us to understand precisely this:
«Do not live in theories, but live where people are.» When you draw near to those who are weak, you touch your own weakness, your own fragility, and it is in that fragility that God is hidden.
There is something absurd in our undertaking—bringing people from Russia, Ghana, Zambia, Argentina, Korea—but I believe it is to cry out to the world: the smallest people must find their place.
- Jean Vanier, 1992
Eight Days on a Bus
For us, traveling by bus was the only economical way—the only way possible. So we organized fifty buses departing from every corner of Poland. Four days on the road...
As we boarded the vehicles, we felt the pilgrimage truly beginning.
My bus carried many families with small disabled children, their brothers and sisters. Living together around the clock, we came to understand the weight these parents carried every day. During the journey, we tried to ease it by freeing the parents to talk with one another, to have coffee, to walk through the cities where we stopped. To cut costs, we brought our own food and shared it among small groups. At night we slept on the ground. The stops were necessary: we breathed deeply the fresh air of southern France, we danced and loosened our stiffened limbs. Some went to wade in the Mediterranean and gather stones and shells to distribute among the others.
How can we forget the welcome we received along the entire route—from parishes, from Faith and Light communities, from monasteries? How can we forget the Mass we shared each day? It was a journey in which hardship and joy fit perfectly into the mystery of Easter. The communities learned ahead of time what it meant to return home. How could we be discouraged when our friends with disabilities already spoke so wonderfully of the four days of travel?
- Piotr (Poland), 1992
To Forgive and Be Forgiven
On Holy Thursday, during the vigil in the hotels, we lived the washing of feet within our community.
Why wash one another's feet? The answer is simple: because Jesus asked us to do as he did. The Gospel of Saint John (13, 1-17) ends with these words of Jesus: «Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.» Jesus announces to us and promises us the blessedness of washing feet.
To wash someone's feet means to serve them, to take the place of a servant—but also to touch the person as Jesus touched them, with respect and with love. It is so beautiful to see a man or woman with a disability washing the feet of their parents! This is also a gesture of humility and forgiveness. By washing another's feet, and accepting that they wash ours, we enter into the mystery of forgiveness: to forgive and be forgiven...
- Fernand Lacroix, Bishop, 1992
International Chaplain of Faith and Light
A Spirit of Joy
We felt deeply that we were part of a «global movement» in which people from every background expressed themselves in the same language, shared the same experience, lived the same emotions. It was perhaps stronger than the pilgrimage itself as we had imagined it.
All the moments lived together in community were intense and vital. Especially the «reconciliation» that helped us feel united, to live as true friends in the depths of ourselves. We felt the spirit of joy, happiness, and peace that belongs to Faith and Light.
- Community «La Vigna» (Naples)
Suddenly I Understand Everything
Good Friday Mass
The scene carries echoes of Scripture, and not only because of where we are. It is a vast crowd: people from everywhere in the world, many colors. Two things bind them together: faith and suffering. Organ notes reach me here at the bottom of this human chasm, telling me the Mass has begun...
There is so much confusion in me: many questions, almost no answers. A cry cuts through the air of this immense underground church. And I grow more confused.
Then suddenly a certainty rushes at me, seizes me. And I understand everything in every detail. But I cannot speak of what I have understood, simply because I do not believe words exist to describe it.
I smile quietly, surrounded by a thick fog of words and sounds. I turn and see Christian, who has come from Martinique, with a solemn and slightly funny look, carrying his whole universe within him.
Luca Dominici, Rome - 1992
Being There With Him
There was a moment during my time at Lourdes when circumstances placed me before a large Cross, where I stared at it for a long time. It was Good Friday. We Italians had gathered for a vigil. A great Cross stood before us and towered over us all. To gaze at the Cross and worship the Lord was for me an attitude of body and spirit together. It is rare today to have the chance to express physically and concretely the yearning of the soul that should be part of our daily life. In that place, Lourdes, where suffering walks hand in hand with joy and the sick hold hands with the healthy, where torches light the darkness each night and words transform into song, my emotion was so great that I could find relief only in adoration and in the silence to feel his presence and the need to say yes. It was the need to say: «I understand nothing and know nothing, I am nothing, but You are and know all, you know everything, and in Your Cross your Resurrection is already present.»
Some see in the Cross only a sad symbol. But there are also those who see it as the simultaneous presence of death and life, and the triumph of life over death; and in adoration, which is silence, they feel the desire to be simply there, with him, together with those who loved him and who love him, and there is nothing else to think, nothing else to say.
At Lourdes, in the midst of an immense crowd, a boy passed by me on a stretcher. He was wrapped in blankets and only his face was visible. His face was the face of Christ on the Cross. How can one form thoughts, in the depths of one's being, when before you passes a boy and with him passes Pain, Mystery, and all you want is to scream, to fall to the ground and pound it with your fists? You cannot think of anything, you cannot say anything. You can only know that you will be there with him—with Him wherever he is.
- Natalia, 1992
I Have So Many Friends
I had some close encounters with young people from other nations, in particular a Russian girl named Liza. I didn't understand what she was saying and she didn't understand me: total confusion. Yet for almost twenty minutes we stood looking at each other, making faces, and «loving» one another as if we had been friends our whole lives...
The way out of suffering is love; that is what Jesus showed us by dying on the cross. So when I suffer for any reason, I think I must look to others for a way out. But it is not easy to love. Yet I have so many friends—my young friends, the young people of Faith and Light who teach me with endless patience, every day, to love, to step out of my selfishness and my suffering. So I want to thank the young people too, because they never tire of being with me and teaching me to love.
- Giovanni Nucci, Rome - 1992
Like Her
Parents discover a new baptism (many lived this moment in the pools!), new strength to keep fighting for the lives of their children, and great peace because they feel so powerfully the presence of Mary. Indeed, like her, we know the suffering of mothers, and from her we receive the strength to respond and to keep loving, as she did.
- Anna, Bari - 1992
The Hidden Suffering of Fathers
The suffering of fathers is no less than that of mothers; it is simply different. Perhaps it is harder to bear because it often remains hidden. We fathers build a wall of silence to hide our despair and our rebellion. I did not want to break down that wall, and I never attended Faith and Light gatherings, despite my wife's gentle requests.
Yet serving as part of the pilgrimage's logistics team was work I enjoyed. I went without realizing that I would be drawn into the life of the community and that I would take part in it, shoulder to shoulder, on the bus and in the hotel. As a member of the service team, I attended every celebration and every gathering.
On Friday morning the community asked me to walk with them in the Way of the Cross. With two other fathers, I carried the cross for part of the journey. That is where I broke—at least inside. I held back tears until later, when I went to the grotto: it had been three years of total isolation.
I believe that on that Good Friday I received the grace to become Luca's father.
- Jodzef, 1992
My Tears
Frances Young, mother of a disabled child and a Methodist pastor, wrote an article for the Methodist Recorder titled «My Extraordinary Pilgrimage,» recounting simply and honestly how she lived this experience. Here are some parts of her testimony.
I discovered that I could not escape the challenge of something that seemed fundamentally good. While a priest from Eastern Europe celebrated Mass in the grotto to thank God for the end of persecutions, I myself was able to repent of my Protestant sense of self-sufficiency and thank the Lord for the gestures I had been asked to make and had chosen to make in a spirit of obedience. Faith and Light was firmly committed to including us—those of us ordained in other Churches, including women—in everything it could, while always respecting the discipline of the Catholic Church. To refuse would have been to turn away from the hand extended in a sign of fraternal love, and my obedience was strangely rewarded. Not only was I afraid of feeling «excluded» in this Catholic context, but above all I feared additional suffering for myself. This place, famous for miracles, might awaken in me the memory of impossible desires and open old wounds, especially since I could not bring Arthur, my profoundly disabled son (he could not have made the journey).
As soon as we arrived, Pauline, a disabled friend, and I went to the Grotto. At first I was disappointed by how ordinary the cave seemed, too clean and too well paved and filled with too obvious religiosity. We looked at the spring and left in silence. But I had already understood that the essential message of Lourdes is about purification and holiness.
The Lady told Bernadette that she was the Immaculate Conception, that Lourdes was a place where sinners should do penance, a place to wash and to drink. There one sheds the impurities and dirt that stain our lives. There one is recognized, welcomed, whereas in many countries rejection and mockery remain the daily experience of people with disabilities.
To go all the way through, I wanted to go to the pools. The nurses immersed me in ice-cold water, but I was sad when I came out because my face and hands had not been washed. And the Lady had specifically said, «Wash your hands and your face.»
Later, with Francesco, a disabled friend, I went to the fountain. Francesco washed my face, and my tears were purified. I washed his face in turn, then, cupping our hands together, we drank.
The Treasure of My Failed Pilgrimage
This was my second Faith and Light pilgrimage to Lourdes: the first had been ten years earlier. I was accompanying my daughter, who is part of one of the L'Arche communities.
The first time, for me as a Protestant, had been an extraordinary discovery. Now everything seemed difficult. I was very tired. My heart was dry and I could not pray. For years I had known how deeply suffering, when accepted and laid at the foot of the Cross, brings infinite riches. I wanted therefore to participate fully in this Holy Week. But I was frozen.
On Holy Thursday there was a particularly powerful moment: the washing of feet in our community, in our hotel. It was extraordinary to wash the feet of my disabled brother, to kneel before him, to receive his blessing. This I did with fervor. Very different was allowing him to wash my feet. Everything wavered.
For the rest of the pilgrimage I made out little of what was being said, because I have hearing difficulties. By some stubborn twist of fate that I could not attribute to bad luck, I never managed to see anything. My daughter said calmly: beautiful, beautiful. I was deaf and blind.
As a Protestant I had wanted to participate genuinely in a pilgrimage that for the first time wanted to be ecumenical: well, I never managed to attend any gathering where this was discussed, except one that I found discouraging.
«Beautiful,» Isabella kept saying—she was eager to enter the Grotto at Lourdes even at the cost of a very long wait. I would have much preferred to pray on the other side of the river, directly facing the grotto, without waiting in line.
To be humbly blessed by my disabled brother. To enter poor and helpless into the crowd. To feel the unknown and useless seed of ecumenism alive there. To be simply there and know myself blessed and washed by my disabled brother: he is the one showing me the way. Yes, Isabella. Beautiful. Beautiful this crowd come from the whole world, this extraordinary gathering of people from the East, Africa, Asia, the Americas. Could I measure the immensity of all that was happening? What did my dry heart and my difficulty in praying matter before this outpouring of the Spirit?
How beautiful, how moving, the young fathers so attentive to their severely disabled small child, when they took on the work of their wives.
Beautiful simply to be there, clothed in white ponchos to witness the Resurrection of Jesus.
Humbly blessed. Was this not the life of Mary, of whom the Gospel tells us so little? Yes, this is what I carry with me as a treasure from my failed pilgrimage.
- Christiane Mallet Watteville, 1992
At Easter, the Greatest Feast
The great meadow is full of joy: singing, dancing, friendship, simplicity. The large white cloth with the risen Christ and the white ponchos, sheets for symbols and for signing the encounters, are the signs of this celebration.
Bring Your Joy to the Churches
You must bring more joy to the churches and to the Church, where sometimes Christians seem to lack enthusiasm. I truly believe it is your special gift to help us recover the true meaning of our lives, which is the joy the Lord gives us.
- Carlo Maria Martini, Archbishop of Milan - 1992
It Gave Me New Strength
The young people, as always, felt great enthusiasm in meeting so many new faces; they spoke of friendships formed instantly in the streets and in gatherings; for them the most beautiful moment was the one we spent on Easter Sunday in the meadow: the feast of the Resurrection.
The warmth I felt from all the participants, that sense of intimate and joyful union, gave me new strength and helped me see difficulties from a completely different perspective. In fact, difficulties—paradoxically—at Faith and Light become energy that pulls and leads us in our own spirit to where we discover what is Essential: the love of God the Father flowing and spreading, and touching hearts, healing them.
- Adriana Duci, Palermo - 1992
Your Wounds
If you come to kneel at the foot of the Cross, the mother of Christ will yield her place. Woman of faith, your wounds will embroider the sky.
- Vittoria, Bari - 1992
Little, But... So Much!
What did we do at Lourdes? Little, but... so much. We danced hand in hand with people we had never met before; we couldn't understand each other's languages, but a smile, a handshake, or a touch was enough to open a conversation. I met a French girl, Stephanie; I don't speak French, yet dancing, singing, and playing allowed us to create a silent dialogue of friendship.
I want to share some lines from Jean Vanier's speech during the young people's vigil—words that struck me deeply and that should serve each of us as encouragement for deeper reflection: «To truly love someone, you must learn to speak well of those who speak ill of you»; «To love, you must learn to live with our frustrations.»
- Anna Ravanelli, Carugate, 1992
They Came From All Over the World
I went to Lourdes. Many people came from all over the world there, to the grotto of the Madonna. There were Europeans, Africans, Japanese, Arabs, Americans. There were 14,000 people. I didn't know their languages and they didn't speak Italian, but we understood each other through gestures, and on Easter Day we embraced like brothers and sisters and wrote our names on each other's «poncho.» It was a sign.
- Giuliana, a young woman, Bari - 1992
Jean Vanier to the Young: «You Will Be Blessed»
On Easter evening, two thousand young people from every nation gather around Cardinal Martini, Marcin Przeciszewski, and Jean Vanier.
Jean speaks—one of the people through whom Faith and Light came into being—about the call that Jesus addresses to each of us.
What strikes me in the Gospel is the way Jesus calls people. Look at Peter and John. Look at the rich young man. «He looked at him and loved him» (Mark 10, 21). Through a meeting of eyes he says to him: «You can trust me; you don't need all your riches. Put your security in me. I will give you new strength, and more than that, I will give you my Spirit.» It is true that the world is hard, and as in Jesus's time, there are many divisions, hatreds, prejudices. But Jesus says: «I will be with you. Come with me.»
There is a kind of fear in answering this call. In 1947, when I was a young naval officer, I came to Lourdes. I believe Jesus called me then. My vocation was born in that moment. But for three years afterward, before I resigned from the navy, I was often afraid. I was afraid that Jesus was calling me to do something I didn't want to do. I had to learn little by little to hear him say «Do not be afraid» and to give him my trust. I had to learn not to think too much about the future, but to live each day seeking to be nourished by God's presence, by the Eucharist, and by the face of the poor. So I let the seed of the Holy Spirit grow inside me.
When Jesus calls us, he does not leave us alone. He gives us brothers and sisters. After telling us «come,» he inspires us to live in community, whether in family or in a community of life or of encounter. As for us gathered here, he calls us to live in the Faith and Light community and commands us: «Go seek the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.» You will be blessed if they are in the heart of your community!...
- Jean Vanier, 1992