Parents, educators, and friends who work with people with intellectual disabilities or personality disorders should read Sister Maria di Gialleonardo's study if they haven't encountered the work of Henri Bissonier. It offers an accessible entry into the teachings of the French psychologist who devoted his life to helping people with difficulties find their place in the world.
The message is one of hope—profound hope. "Even the smallest progress of these little ones deserves all our effort." The work is difficult and long, yes. But there is hope.
Particularly valuable is the section on how to approach people with disabilities: how to see their situation clearly, and how to reach them with respect, trust, esteem, welcome, and above all love. These qualities should mark how we treat everyone, but they are essential with those most vulnerable and most defenseless (ch. I, p. 20).
Before turning to religious education, one should study the part on human normalization: language and expression, eating together, work, money, recreation. These are treated in chapter III, pages 86–90.
On religious education, Bissonier makes an observation drawn from long experience: mental retardation is not a barrier to religious influence.
The study offers a methodology born from the author's work with students. This is a gift Italy has not yet offered to those wanting to nurture faith in people with intellectual disabilities.
The first step is essential: place the person in contact with a living Christian community. I think with joy of the Fede e Luce communities, whose liturgical celebrations are themselves living catechesis.
Liturgy, as Bissonier shows, is truly effective and concrete—made to be understood, felt, grasped. It speaks to the senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste (p. 105).
Liturgy speaks in symbols: colors, gestures, objects. The symbol touches the heart intuitively and draws it to prayer, wonder, joy, praise (p. 106). In its beauty, grandeur, and solemnity, liturgy conveys the sacred (p. 107) and opens the way to religious expression.
The person with mental disability is drawn to contemplation, to seeing, to participating in the celebration with gestures, to living with joy in God's presence. This is prayer.
How Scripture is presented matters greatly. Images, biblical symbols, passages from the Gospel in their simplicity are especially powerful. In the liturgy, symbols speak plainly: the Church is God's house; water is life; the Eucharist is a feast.
Beyond this communal prayer fed by the liturgy, people with intellectual disabilities can pray personally—if they have known the love of their father and the love of Christ. This prayer may be silent, contemplative, more than words. The family can help them find their way to this prayer (p. 110).
The Sacraments, signs of grace, can be received deeply if presented in their simplicity, with attention to the power of gesture, symbol, and word (p. 137).
Bissonier's work is fundamentally an act of faith: faith in the human soul, in its capacity to grow, in the seeds of goodness and love that God has planted there.
With her study, Sister Maria di Gialleonardo has transmitted Bissonier's message and will help many move to the works themselves—works that offer a "pedagogy of Resurrection."
Review by Ida Maria Ferri