These three words capture the true essence of Faith and Light's story—and they are a wish above all else. "Never alone again" tries to say in three words what Faith and Light is really about, even though many people have yet to discover it.
When someone who knows nothing about us asks, "What exactly do you do at Faith and Light?" I always want to answer: "We don't really do anything"—which happens to be the truth. We weren't founded to do things for people with disabilities. We were founded to stand beside them, to be present with them and their parents, to make sure they are never left alone.
I wish I could quote the beautiful words Cardinal Martini wrote for Faith and Light in the preface to the book "Never Alone": "Faith and Light is a page of the Gospel that the Spirit has written and continues to write for the men and women of our time." I wish I could comment on the words J. Vanier chose for his introduction: "called to joy." I wish I could name all the people—beginning with Marie-Hélène—who have given part of their lives so that Faith and Light could take root in countries across the world. I wish I could honor the dedication of countless seminarians, priests, and bishops who have given everything, with courage and often against the current.
But this editorial is not for them—though their work inspired me to write it, prompted by the Italian publication of Marie-Hélène Mathieu's book by Jaca Book. If you look at the photographs in the center of that book—photo 5, or 25, or 26—you will understand at once who I really want to talk about: the youngest members of Faith and Light (though many are now fifty years old). Because they were the ones, I believe, who lit the spark that set everything else in motion.
When we organized the very first Faith and Light camp—tents and all—with Guenda, we went to a care center for severely disabled children to choose about fifteen of them for a mountain holiday. We asked the staff: "Has Fabio ever been on vacation, as far as you know?" The answer came back: "No. His parents couldn't manage it—he's too severely disabled. Besides, the city, the beach, the mountains—it's all the same to him!" "Then we'll take him with us."
That was how we fell under the spell of a simple idea: to bring children whose parents were too isolated, too abandoned to afford a vacation.
One thing led to another. Slowly, bonds formed—between parents, their children, and friends. We tried everything that came to mind: outings, home visits, picnics in the open air, festive Masses where one day a boy named Claudio—now in heaven—suddenly burst into song with "Bandiera rossa," telling us it was his father's song.
Looking at those photographs, you begin to understand what this book is really about. It doesn't matter if the first section covers only the early history—the 1971 pilgrimage and all its difficulties. It doesn't matter if some details seem unnecessary to some readers. What matters, what must be read in these pages, is this: every word written, every story, every name is part of what J. Vanier calls a "sacred" history—a history guided by the Spirit, carried forward by countless people. And what must also be understood is this: there is no hierarchy here, even though people often speak of our founders. Because I will never stop saying that the true founders are, and always will be, the children and their parents themselves. I think of Maria Rosaria's mother, invited to one of our first meetings when we didn't know where to begin. I timidly suggested: "Could we start by saying a Hail Mary?" She answered: "Mary? I can't even remember her anymore!" I think of another mother who came to visit me with her son and said: "I'm Jewish, atheist, divorced—can I come?"
The true protagonists and founders are each and every one of them—every child with a disability and their parents, helped by friends both young and old. A newborn just fifteen days old, whom her mother friend brings to our gatherings. An eighty-five-year-old friend who proudly tells everyone she will keep coming to Faith and Light until the end.
We often ask ourselves: "How did a small group of a few people grow into such a large movement?"
I am convinced that Faith and Light is something willed by Jesus's mother—that mother to whom, the first time I went to Lourdes in person, I said (and I don't think I was alone): "It's easy for you to say, but your child spoke, walked, taught. Ours are marked by everything negative. How could you possibly understand us?"
And she understood us completely—giving us this gift so great that all the pages in this book cannot contain it. She gave us Faith and Light, which in its essence is a great friendship between heaven and earth.