"As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be displayed in him.'" (John 9:3)Here we encounter a new answer to an old and anguished question. The answer is new, but the question is ancient. It is so ancient that it persists, returning again and again — because the human suffering of parents whose child has faced grave difficulty from birth or early childhood is itself ancient. The question — who? How? Why? Where does the cause lie? — connects the illness of an innocent person to some prior sin, some fault, some responsibility of another. As the Gospel passage itself shows, this question emerges later when the Pharisees call the man who was blind and demand of him: "Is he a sinner? You must say he is a sinner." The man replies, "No, that's not true — he opened my eyes!" They then insult him, saying: "You were born entirely in sin, and you dare teach us?" That phrase — born in sin — refers to being born into misfortune. It reveals how instinctive, in this ancient piety, the connection between misfortune and sin, fault, or some form of culpability had become. "Neither he nor his parents have sinned, but he was born blind so that God's works might be displayed in him." What suffering gives birth to this question — so anguished, so old, yet rising instinctively still? It springs first from the deep bond of love you feel for a son or daughter who suffers. It comes from a profound love made heavier still by the daily struggle — the fear of not coping, the maze of relationship and communication that is difficult to explain to others. Another source of this suffering is isolation. The desire to connect with others fades. You are overwhelmed by tangled circumstances that push you inward, that weaken your life beyond this narrow circle. A child in grave, serious difficulty comes to absorb so much of your energy that he or she becomes the sole source of your relationships — and everything else falls away. Then the question arises, sometimes buried, sometimes unspoken — the question about fault: why? how? whose fault is this? Sometimes you ask yourselves: what sin have we committed? What wrong have we done? The question eats away at your conscience. A sense of guilt takes hold, and the relationship itself becomes torment. This suffering — which we encounter so often — hardens into withdrawal or rupture with society, expressed in the lament: "Society speaks much but does little. There is no real help." This dark picture has a psychological explanation. Saint Francis de Sales calls it "the restlessness of being made restless." You want peace; instead you lose patience. You become anxious. You feel guilty, and then guilty for feeling guilty. You remain irritated with yourselves. The situation is certainly obscure, but it is one that many people live without being able to communicate it or explain it. Jesus answered: "Neither he nor his parents have sinned, but he was born blind so that God's works might be displayed in him." These words contain both a negative part and a positive part. The negative part urges you to set aside, as useless and irrelevant, all the feelings of guilt and responsibility that burden only the soul and produce nothing good. Jesus is clear and decisive on this point. He is not denying that scientific inquiry might sometimes demonstrate one responsibility or another of various kinds. But Jesus says that such an approach does not help. Jesus says: "Neither this nor that." There is no place, no validity, for that kind of thinking for anyone who truly wishes to feel at peace and right with God, who wishes to find the path of faith. Such thoughts, impressions, and feelings always lead nowhere. They weigh you down. They leave you confused and uncertain. I believe this is an experience we should all examine carefully: an experience many of you live acutely, and yet one that touches many of us in some way. How often do we let ourselves be drawn into thoughts that burden us, that solve nothing in our situation, but only make it heavier and darker? They have no right to exist, Jesus says. They make no sense. God asks other things of us. What? Here is the positive part of Jesus's word. "So that God's works might be displayed in him." Jesus avoids answering the question about causes. Jesus has said: "Neither he nor his parents." Jesus does not enter into the realm of causation. Instead, he shifts the entire frame of reference to purpose. What is to come from this? What is to emerge? What design of God is to be revealed? Naturally you will say: of course — since this man born blind is to be healed, God's design is the miracle. If it were always so, we would all agree. The answer would be ready-made. So let us ask ourselves: when Jesus says, "so that God's works might be displayed in him," do these words have value only in that single case where a miracle occurs and the situation transforms extraordinarily? Or do they not, in your experience and especially in the experience of Fede e Luce, carry a meaning all their own? Is it not along your common path that mysterious works of God are displayed in your children — works for which you are becoming, slowly and with wonder, witnesses? It seems to me that Jesus invites us to read this passage anew. I offer only a few examples, drawn from you, from your experience, from your lives, and from what I know or can understand of what is happening among you. Think, for instance, of the difficulty those with grave disabilities face in relating to others. When communication is severely limited, when it is hard to know if you are understood and if you understand, you glimpse what an immense gift communication is — a gift often wasted, yet even the smallest measure of it holds boundless value. From this very difficulty emerges a testimony of creative love, capable of overcoming barriers thought insurmountable. In our society, which is far too loud, this love has extraordinary power. It is, I believe, an immense gift to the Church itself. Love establishes a relationship so profound that it multiplies and continually reveals new forms of communication — made of waiting, of tenacity, of perseverance, of the gift of life. This is why the temptation to isolate yourselves is a temptation you must, and do, refuse. Jesus's words — "Neither he nor his parents have sinned" — tell us that for him, withdrawal, isolation, self-absorption make no sense. To succumb to them is a gravest temptation. But the courage to invite others to share your suffering is a gift offered to all humanity. For Jesus, to ask "Who sinned?" is to shut oneself in, to isolate oneself from others in discouragement, to reach no positive outcome. "So that God's works might be displayed in him" — precisely in the person whose limitations seem to allow expression only in the most modest form. The way your children express themselves, however barely perceptible, carries immense human dignity. It is therefore your task, and the task of all who support you, to break their isolation and to make the value of their existence recognized. You have, then, an enormously great human and social task. This is why it is absurd to live your reality with a sense of guilt or negative burden. The path you are treading, difficult as it is, is instead — according to Jesus's word — a call to take positive responsibility, to accomplish the daily miracle of honoring the dignity of one who bears within them a mysterious design of God. A great lesson for our society, which, when faced with "difficult cases," tends to segregate them or ignore them — because it feels guilty or inadequate to address them. You in Fede e Luce are far advanced on this path. You know well that you are pioneers. Unfortunately, even today parents are burdened with excessive responsibility. You who live in this movement carry a great testimony to offer: a positive responsibility, conscious of its own limits. This translates into an appeal to society: the disabled person, the person in psychiatric crisis, the person in grave difficulty — is not in any way a sign of parental sin or responsibility. Rather, such a person is a sign of the suffering that runs through all human and social life, suffering that must be faced within a vision of redemption and reconciliation. This is why it is plainly wrong to withdraw from society. You must engage it boldly and with dignity, presenting your problems, your demands. No one should accept marginalization in their suffering, for the profound dignity of that suffering demands respect and must be taken up by society itself. Pity and welfare services are not enough. You must reach to the heart of social and economic planning. You must involve the leaders of public institutions. This is a task that requires many hands. The weakest must be defended and supported most strongly. This requires planning in the fields of labor and economics. The generosity and solidarity expressed through volunteer work cannot substitute for the gaps in choices that society must make. The social work ahead is still enormous. It is from a movement like yours that spiritual impulses, educational and cultural forces can come — forces capable of touching many others who remain indifferent. It must no longer fall to families alone to solve problems too grave for them. They should not be left at the edge of survival, alone in the daily management of the most difficult cases. I believe we all have a very great task here, especially as believers and as Christian communities. I am convinced that all our communities must undergo an authentic conversion, opening themselves to welcome disabled persons of every kind and their families according to a demanding, engaging, and priority-based project. We have tried to implement this in the Diocese of Milan. Yet I see how difficult it is to help parishes understand it. Some do translate this commitment into one initiative or another, small or large, but they remain occasional. Instead, such a conversion should not simply lead to acts of charity. It should involve a genuine transformation that truly changes the parameters of existence and thus takes on immense social value. It seems to me that, reflecting on your experience, we come to understand deeply the meaning of that evangelical phrase — "so that God's works might be displayed in him," in his blindness, in his poverty, in his suffering. Your path of solidarity, your journey as parents in Fede e Luce, brings you to recognize how central is the primacy of life — understood as gift, as welcome, as service, as solidarity. This reality, even as it renews the weight and pain of the present, pushes you to bring to our restless world — incapable of finding reasons for life amid such absurdity — the surprise of joy, of your faith, rooted in a capacity for love that finds strength and source in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini
An edited version of the address delivered by Cardinal Martini to parents of disabled children in the Fede e Luce movement, Assisi, April 1986, published in Ombre e Luci, year 4, no. 2