A Great Privilege
I read the letters you publish in Ombre e Luci with great interest, and I want to share my own story.
For several years I have lived with a widow whom I love dearly and hold in high regard. She is a woman of quiet strength who has faced hardship with serenity, sustained always by faith and love for her children.
Beyond her oldest son—a good, bright, accomplished student in his final year of accounting school—she has another child, Mattia, who is handicapped.
In the early years of our life together, despite my genuine affection, I was ashamed to go out with him. I always had an excuse ready. He felt like an insurmountable obstacle to our union, to our happiness. I simply could not accept him.
But as I came to know him, day after day, and after working through a difficult experience of my own, something shifted. I saw how much love he had for me. I stopped viewing him as different. I began to see him as a person from whom I had so much to learn. Now I feel he is my son. I am proud the way a father is proud. The peace has returned to my heart.
I regard it as an extraordinary privilege to have found the strength to give and receive such profound love.
Ugo Martini - Langhirano (PR)
An Educator's Disillusionment
I work as a professional educator in a large day center for disabled adults. We do small crafts—woodworking, ceramics, leatherwork, embroidery, and more.
The young people are wonderful. They give so much, every day, even when they wrap you in their anguish, aggression, or struggle to express themselves harmoniously. They teach you patience, calm, joy, smiles, love, and freedom. Despite having endured ridicule, rejection, tears, and abandonment, they carry a quiet humanity within them.
I love the work. But the wounds and burdens pile up. I have been here three years. At first, I believed that beyond professional training, this work demanded something deeper—a spiritual and human foundation—to sustain the strength and courage to serve their growth, to love them always, even when they tire you, even when they test your patience, even when their disabilities mean progress is slow and limited. Recently I discovered that work like this can become just like any other: something done for personal interest, for a steady paycheck, without regard for the people involved. Yes, you can work with people without truly seeing them, without loving them.
This troubles me deeply. Before my eyes, I see people who mock these young people, who assume they cannot improve, who make no real proposals because "that's just how they are—nothing can change." Our disabled youth become an excuse, a way institutions and staff salve their consciences while keeping them at a distance, very far away.
Sometimes I am ashamed to be an educator in a place like this, because I feel how much needs to change. There is no real faith in these young people, no faith in their families, no faith in life itself. Instead, judgment walks briskly forward, along with falsity and appearances tied to productivity.
If we learned to look at each other through God's eyes, to see each person as capable of simply "being"—if we learned to love as God loves each of His children, uniquely and personally—there would be fewer disabled people, but far fewer "normal" people who are themselves disabled without knowing it.
The pride of the able-bodied is that they can do everything, even trample others, mock them, judge them, dissect them. But we do not realize that we lack the humanity, the respect, the love that the disabled possess.
I once believed deeply in this work. But now that I have seen both its face and its underside, I am deeply disillusioned. In conscience, I feel bound to examine the ethics of work—in my own life and more broadly.
I think of the families who turn to these centers, investing their anxieties and hopes there, and I wonder how often they leave disappointed and deceived by vague answers or classifications wrapped in jargon. People living with suffering must contend daily with bureaucracy, with institutions. Every day they take blows simply for asking what is rightfully theirs. And how many disappointments come because they trusted a center or a person who seemed competent and good.
We all need to go back to school—a school of humanity, of work ethics. As an educator, I feel called to examine myself and to sit at the feet of the great Teacher: the Lord who, with a love that is unique and unrepeatable, conducts us toward freedom and the full realization of life, with absolute trust even where change seems impossible.
Luciana Spigolon
I Failed My Daughter
Someone gently asked if I wanted to speak about how we live with anxiety for our daughter's future. I give thanks always to God that He keeps my husband and me united—we are both 72 now—along with our 40-year-old daughter, who has mild difficulties but remains dependent on us.
Through my work with my Faith and Light community and similar gatherings, I have come to know many parents of different ages. We talk about this and that, but the conversation always ends with the same question: Where will my child go when I am gone? Who will care for them? We try to find answers, but there are none—except for what we read and learn from other families in Ombre e Luci. People say that with age comes wisdom, and how true that is. My years have taught me to reflect on how I failed my daughter.
(Though it must be said: forty years ago, no one helped us, and there were no resources.)
I say "failed" because with all my anxieties, my careful attention, the way I bathed her, the foods I prepared, dressing her, undressing her—I thought I was helping her grow, showing how much I loved and wanted to protect her from who knows what.
I was wrong. Nearly everything was wrong. Now I lack even the courage to visit one of the existing care facilities to explore options for her future. The one thing I did not get wrong was giving her the chance to make many friends in Faith and Light. They will help me find the courage I spoke of, to maintain a warm friendship with my daughter, and to ease the daily anxiety of trying to recover what was lost—some small measure of autonomy that might help her live a fuller life.
A Mother
This Is Called Friendship
Moved by a spirit of welcome and encouraged by our spiritual guide, Sister Ada, a few of us traveled to a Faith and Light gathering in Naples. That meeting lit a spark in us. We felt called to create a community like that in Acerra too.
Our community is called "Emanuel," and this year we celebrated four years of life. In those years, a beautiful friendship has grown among us.
There have been joyful moments and moments of crisis. Each time, friendship has seen us through. Each of us has a role, and despite our various limits, we do our best to fulfill it. We are about thirty people: twelve young people with disabilities, six parents, and thirteen friends. At one gathering with Ada, we read a passage from The Little Prince. One line struck me deeply: "Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
This phrase moved me because I believe that a real relationship with another person has nothing to do with material things. It is those bonds that the eye cannot see but the heart can feel. This is what we call friendship. Without it, there are no real connections. But when it exists, you can move freely toward the other person—toward anyone who is different.
Piera
Emanuel Community, Acerra
What the Retreat Taught Us
Hello to all of you, readers of Ombre e Luci. I am writing to share the beautiful experience I had this year at a retreat organized by the communities "Immaculate Conception and Spirit of Love" in Bari. (This is not my first time attending.)
From the moment I first heard about the retreat, I felt a strong desire pull me toward it. I believe this desire comes from a deeper longing: to know God more deeply through the friendship I have with the disabled young people.
It was an intense, beautiful, powerful week—the campfire, the walks, the games. But most of all, it was the chance to be with the young people. I made new friendships and deepened others. And in relation to my deepest desire, I can tell you with great joy that my friendship with the disabled young people grew stronger.
At that retreat, I gave myself completely. I let myself be drawn in by their presence, their smiles, their joys, their eyes, each small gesture—and yes, even their silences, their worries. Through this friendship—this channel of communication that had begun with some and strengthened with others—I felt flooded with their love. This is God's love, given to us through them. And we know that only in love is there a true relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters. With great joy I received their love, gathered it into my heart, and I return to my daily life enriched by this immense and precious gift: their great love. His great love.
Tonino - Immaculate Conception Community - BA