A man alone in an enormous urban space. A man alone, limping, in the rain as day gave way to darkness. A man alone, accompanied by the sound of tolling bells and sirens, fragile and mighty at once as he carried the world's suffering and the hope of faith before God. When he began to speak—at first labored from the journey he had made—that man invoked an image held dear by the communities of Faith and Light.
"For weeks now it has seemed as if evening had fallen," Pope Francis said on Friday, March 27, from a St. Peter's Square stripped bare as we have never seen it and likely never will again. "Dense darkness has gathered over our squares, streets, and cities; it has seized our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a desolate emptiness that paralyzes all it touches: you feel it in the air, you sense it in gestures, you see it in people's eyes. We found ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel, we were caught off guard by an unexpected and furious storm. We realized we are all on the same boat, all fragile and bewildered, and yet at the same time important and necessary, all called to row together, all in need of comforting one another. On this boat… we are all here."
A boat is the symbol of Faith and Light. A boat carrying twelve small figures, surrounded by a sky heavy with clouds and towering waves. A boat to embody a community that lives, loves, suffers, rejoices, and struggles—together. Pope Francis spoke to the world and of the world, but we felt—for once, at least—in the front row.
We who know all too well that it is impossible to "go forward each on our own"; that the only road to face difficulty and nurture life is always and necessarily to move forward together. It was no accident that Together was the name of the first newsletter that Mariangela Bertolini began circulating nearly forty years ago to families of people with disabilities, so they might feel a little less alone.
The Pope continued to speak, continued his prayer that we, of all people, understood perfectly well, even if at times we struggle to hear, to concentrate, to communicate, to see, to listen. We know this world too well—the world absorbed by things and haste, the world made deaf by so many stubborn blind men convinced they are healthy, strong, and capable of everything.
Solitary, suffering, and drenched, Francis did not speak to us, about us, or for us on Friday, March 27. Francis spoke with us.
"Why are you afraid?" Jesus asks the disciples as he wakes. Meb—the artist with Down syndrome who nearly fifty years ago created the logo of Faith and Light—drew waves that grew calm as they approached the boat. "Jesus," he explained at the time to Marie Hélène Mathieu, the movement's founder, "sleeps at the bottom of the boat. There is nothing to fear. He watches over the passengers."
Pope Francis said it today; Meb said it long ago, because for centuries the Gospel has been saying it. It rains, sometimes, often; we are alone with the world's suffering, sometimes, often. But "You care for us"; You have taught us care.