I am the mother of a severely handicapped daughter.
When Monica was born, despite arriving with serious complications, we welcomed her with joy because she was a new life entering our family, and we have always believed that a child is a blessing from God. We already had a son, Andrea, who had given us some difficulties at birth, but since those problems resolved within a few months, we thought it would be the same for Monica. Surely, as time passed, there would be improvements, and eventually she would be healed. That was our conviction. But it did not happen that way.
Time passed, and her problems grew more serious. Visits to doctor after doctor, from our local specialists to distant authorities, yielded nothing but disappointment. The exhaustion of this situation—this constant tension—provoked in us a wall of rejection. We continued to fight for her health, but we did so shut away in our own abnormal circumstances.
When we went to church and she disturbed everyone with her cries and constant restlessness, people would turn and stare. Someone would shush her. We felt deeply ashamed and could not really experience the meaning of Holy Mass at all. We stopped going to church. When we visited someone's home, we lived in constant fear she would disturb people or break something. We stopped visiting friends—and before that, no one ever came to see us.
«We continued on our path feeling more alone than ever, harboring a certain bitterness toward society at large»
«We continued on our path feeling more alone than ever, harboring a certain bitterness toward society at large»We retreated into ourselves, convinced that neither the Church nor society could accept her. The final blow came from her school. She had been attending for five years, but at one point they sent her home because she was disruptive—and this was supposed to be a special school for handicapped children!
We continued on our path feeling more alone than ever, harboring a certain bitterness toward society at large.
For us, it became a kind of comfortable prison, because she was calmer and we were calmer. So to speak—because it was far from an easy life.
Then some friends came into our lives. They welcomed her for who she was, and with both gentleness and firmness, they brought us to Assisi with other families and other suffering people.
There, for the first time, we understood that Monica too had her own precise place in the Church. She had a special task: to witness through her suffering the love of God. Saint Francis showed us this—he had loved the poor, the sick, the handicapped because he saw God's presence in them.
His example rekindled a light in us.
A light that would bring about a great change.
We had to question how we were living, had to change our lives, had to reach beyond our comfort, had to share our suffering with others and tell everyone that Monica was a tangible sign of Jesus's presence among us.
«These friends became for us a bridge cast between the harsh reality of life and God's love for us»
«These friends became for us a bridge cast between the harsh reality of life and God's love for us»A new faith awakened in us—courage, enthusiasm, hope. We accepted with renewed joy and from a different perspective this child who, in her suffering, elevated our task as parents to new and higher values. Even her behavior changed. She felt accepted—not only by her brother, who loved her tenderly, or by her grandparents, who adored her, or by us, her whole world—but also by friends, many friends who gave her attention and affection.
Then Andrea became ill and died, but even in our great sorrow, we accepted his loss in the name of the Lord. He had willed it so, and so it was.
We went on pilgrimage to Lourdes. I was shattered by Andrea's recent death. Standing before the Virgin, I felt her so close to me, more capable than anyone of understanding my pain! She, the universal mother, who had accepted the birth of a Son, knowing full well what would happen to him—so humble and great at once—and who had made herself an instrument in God's hands not for herself but for all humanity, was there before me.
I looked at the statue, but I saw beyond it. I saw the person she had been: a woman like me, a mother like me, desperate like me.
She had watched her Son die, and what remained for her was all of humanity to take by the hand and lead before that cross raised for our salvation.
We had to question how we were living, had to change our lives, had to reach beyond our comfort, had to share our suffering with others...
We had to question how we were living, had to change our lives, had to reach beyond our comfort, had to share our suffering with others...I too had watched my son die, and what remained for me was Monica.
This child—who counted for nothing in society's eyes because she could never excel at the things society values—became our salvation, because her love taught us how to live.
Once again we saw how boundless was God's love for us.
Through her suffering at the loss of her brother, which shattered her, she called us back to our duty. She asked for our love.
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And we said yes to her need, and yes to the Lord—that yes which Mary spoke with such humility and awareness when she was told of her Son. It is not always easy, because problems exist and must be solved, and there is still anguish from what we have lived through. But we try always to live in keeping with our acceptance of life, because life is the greatest gift God has given us. And there is one thing that is gratifying for us, something we would never give up against all the suffering in the world: Monica's presence among us.
She is love for the love she bears us. She is the small flame that kindles hope in us. Most of all, she is a call to faith, because very often throughout the day she repeats: "Holy Mary, Mother of God."
The Lord has given her a particularly great task, and she carries it out by challenging our tiredness, our weakness, our self-pity.
- Monica Varoli, 1988