The pilgrimage planning team asked me the question of the age: "What future do we have? How do we make our charism alive for today?" If I had the answer, if the Church had the answer!
You have certainly received a gift and a mission in the Church. But there comes a time when, like every living reality, you must have the courage to let yourselves be transformed and to become leaven. I have been blessed to travel abroad and encounter other Faith and Light communities, and I thought: Italy is different. Here, the communities live in parishes, rooted in their neighborhoods. If I were to describe Faith and Light with single words, I would say: home, friendship, a place where people meet. Today I want to give you two images to hold onto. At the altar and at the table of life.
I think of you, and I think too of those who come to Mass in my parish in Rome, to your liturgies; there is no Vatican conference or world event where you are not actively present. We were together when, preparing for the Jubilee of Mercy, Paolo Tantaro—the association's president at that time—raised his hand and said, "Could we try performed Gospel readings in St. Peter's Square?" Silence. I thought to myself: "God, have we gone too far?" But then... Yes, yes. And it was a beautiful experience. Your liturgies provoke; they call the Church and everyone who takes part toward a new vision, a different way of seeing.
And then I think of the table of life. Every time I've come, you eat together. The challenge is for the table to become the primary place of humanization. In this time of so much conflict and suffering, the tables you inhabit—and the way you inhabit them—can become schools of evangelization, schools of humanization.
What happens at table? Our bodies, our senses come alive. Taste, smell, eyes meeting eyes, silences, language. The table, it strikes me, is really a synodal method of listening, of encountering others, of respecting them. At table you learn a way of being together. The table becomes almost an active apprenticeship. At table, as the Gospel says, everyone is invited—or should be invited.
Here is the first challenge you could take on. I once told someone among you: instead of just renting a hall, why not step into the parish itself? Why not mix with the parish community? You could help parishes invite everyone to the table. Christian communities often don't even realize that some people are missing from that table. You could be salt; you could say to the parish, "Wait—why do we only have our own people here? Why aren't families with disabilities there? Why aren't the elderly?" You could be that voice.
In the book of Samuel, we read how David says, "If the son of Jonathan does not come, I will not sit at table." That is family: a family that seeks, that seeks the last, that seeks those who are missing.
Research released yesterday on families with disabled children found that only 24 percent of them have a friend. You are champions of friendship. You know what friendship is. People with disabilities and their families are not people to be assisted—they are friends with whom you walk a path of faith. But forgive me, I need to challenge you now. You must share your gift beyond your own circles. That is the only way to save yourselves. Otherwise you become self-referential, you die, because your numbers will fall. Young people aren't coming; fifty years ago there were far fewer options, but now there are many proposals that seem more attractive, more appealing, more fun than these.
The challenge is to learn, to relearn, the language of the table. In a time of all-you-can-eat buffets, when people eat without limits, when there is abundance everywhere, you could be teachers of this—and you could invite our communities to move from the bread of the table to the bread of the altar. At Sunday Mass, regardless of what groups people belong to, it is the community that gathers together. You should be that voice—people unafraid to mingle, unafraid to give of yourselves. You need to be more and more present in parishes. Parishes may be frayed at the edges, but there are 25,000 of them in Italy, and people still knock on their doors, people still cry out, people still ask for help.
Sixty-seven percent of caregivers—brothers, sisters, parents—have never had someone stand beside them, someone to help them. I am a caregiver too; I am a daughter, a sister, I have relatives with disabilities. How much I would wish that my sister, my mother, my father had people walking alongside them, people who stay with them. There is a people waiting for your voice. At the table of the Lord's banquet, challenge the parishes, challenge the dioceses. Many of you are coordinators of disability ministry in our dioceses—I think of Don Mauro Santoro, for example. Challenge the dioceses to say: we cannot exclude anyone from the Lord's table because at the Lord's table we learn to become community, we learn each other's gifts, and there is room for all. Then truly, liturgy becomes that place where we learn not to wage battles but to discover new ways of being.
We are asking serious questions about the vocation of people with disabilities. What is their vocation? To pray the rosary, to sit in the front row? Is their disability their vocation? No, absolutely not. Help the Church move beyond a purely charitable mindset, beyond seeing people with disabilities only as fragments of who they are. Help ensure that families have voice and participate more and more. Sometimes parish priests are afraid; they don't know how. You are teachers—you already work with so much. So be companions on the journey with humility, make yourselves small, say "We are ready to help"—and young people will look at you and say, "That's beautiful!"
We held a Jubilee for young people—1,800 young people with disabilities. There was a disabilities hub, but in every area there was also space where 80 percent of people with disabilities stayed with their own friends and companions. That is beautiful: giving the choice, having men and women walk with them, living experiences together with other young people.
One last image: leaven. Leaven is an image that recurs often in the Gospel. In this historical moment we are all called to be salt, to be leaven. Leaven has a clear identity, and you have one: you have a history, fifty years of wonders to tell. But leaven, if it doesn't mix with flour and water, dies. Have the courage to continue bearing fruit of holiness. You are teachers of spirituality. Today we speak of the spirituality of people with disabilities, of families. You have been speaking of it for fifty years already. Think of what inheritance you have, what responsibility you carry in the Church.
Help the Church more and more—and help civil and ecclesial society. Pope Francis has said that often people with disabilities exist but do not belong. In 2016, for the first time with him, people with disabilities took the microphone and asked questions. Bergoglio said to them: "All or none." Who can help make those words come alive, help make the Church's teaching, the Gospel, real in the world? The Lord uses our hands, our arms, uses us. Be those visionaries; be that broken bread.
There are many wars, many conflicts. Nine out of ten families with disabilities do not have a complete meal; they eat every other day; they live on the edge of poverty. And you know this. You don't have to solve everything, but you must be sentinels. You must occupy those pulpits, those altars where you challenge and say, "Let's give voice, together we can do it, together we can change, together we can be those visionaries and that broken bread that feeds five thousand and sends them home."
My wish for you today is to be hearts that set other hearts on fire. I think of Nicolò Goboni, who was at the Jubilee for young people: a boy with real problems, a child people didn't know what to do with, suffering, isolated in a separate classroom. A teacher gave him credit; she told him, "You have a gift." And now he has created a reality that works in various parts of the world for school dignity, that teaches people how to work with people with disabilities and social hardship. In number 47 of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope says that families with disabilities are called to be witnesses precisely because they have lived so many Good Fridays and continue to live them, and they can be witnesses of the resurrection.
But sometimes families—and I say this as one living it myself—are afraid, they feel alone, they can't go on. So you are already teachers in this. Help us. And I say this truly as Church: help us accompany our dioceses with the beautiful, colorful, alive, normal, joyful, festive, deeply human style that you have. When I think of you, I truly think you are teachers of humanity—the kind we need today, a deep humanity. My wish is that you be that broken bread and be hearts that set other hearts on fire. Don't let anxiety about numbers take hold. The Lord will bless you. If you have the courage to go out, to change, to die, to let something go, the Lord blesses. Of this I am truly certain, because I see it.