The person with mental disability behaves in ways we are not accustomed to; their reasoning is often incoherent, they cannot hold stable work, they lack a good measure of autonomy and remain always dependent. Their emotional life does not reach maturity. We could list many other differences. But these differences are relative. We see a difference only when we compare two values. Our judgment depends on the values we place in relation to each other.
We give essential importance to efficiency, intelligence, strength, health, and so on. We accept them all as values without much reflection. They reach us from every direction: television, radio, newspapers, through the products we buy, in the environments where we live and work.
We are part of a world that excludes values that do not produce immediate results or direct economic or political utility. The person who does not meet the demands of these particular categories is cast aside, considered useless, a grave burden on society's shoulders. To ease its conscience, society builds institutions for the nonproductive—the sick, the handicapped, the elderly—or raises funds for the poor. But all these "works of charity" fall into the same value categories that originate division and do not unify people with one another. (Why war between nations, why divorce in families, if not for the same reasons?)
In a world ruled by values of struggle and selfishness, the presence of the handicapped person provokes society's reaction. Each of us knows cases where hostility has actually shown itself.
I will cite two examples—ordinary, but frequent.
A few years ago in Brussels, I entered a small restaurant with a handicapped girl. We sat at a table. The owner approached immediately to tell us there was no room for us, that people like her belonged in a hospital, that his restaurant was not a social organization, and that we were driving away his customers. He offered us a free meal if we would go to a separate room to be alone. We stubbornly stayed at our table. After half an hour's wait, the waiter brought the drink I had ordered and whispered to me: "Leave or we call the police. This is a private restaurant."
The person with disability, whom the world considers scarcely human, wishes and is able to humanize the world. They are a sign of contradiction before which each of us is obliged to take a stand.
Another incident sparked the idea of Faith and Light here among us. A mother with her seven-year-old son, whose behavior was disturbed, found herself one day in front of her apartment building. The boy approached two teenagers, about sixteen or seventeen. Seeing the boy ask them questions, one said: "He's crazy." They took him behind the building and one burned his chest with a cigarette. The mother began to scream, called the police. They called the parents of the two youths.
"This is not his place," they answered. "Let him go to the psychiatric hospital and we'll all have peace." The police left, saying that after all those two youths had not killed anyone.
The mother was shaken to her core. She had found complete rejection from civil society. Two days later she took the boy to the parish for special catechism class. After the lesson, we entered the church.
Mass had just begun. I told the boy not to shout. He stayed quiet. But every so often he asked a question—in a low voice, but loud enough for everyone in the church to hear. What followed was like a scene from a film: every head of the gathered faithful turned at the same moment. Since the boy did not stop asking questions "in a low voice," the priest came and told us we were disturbing the holy mass and that we should leave, or if we wished, we could go to the chapel next door.
It was too much for that mother. Cast out from the church itself.
Four months later, the first community of Faith and Light gathered in that same church for the Eucharist with handicapped children.
There is no getting around it: the person with disability disturbs always and everywhere. It is their vocation, their revolutionary force, their struggle for a better world.
They are incapable of leading a political party, solving financial problems, changing economic structures, inventing a new form of energy. They will never use the atomic bomb to frighten others, but they can frighten more than the bomb; they liberate enormous energies from the human heart. They stand at the center of a radical shift in values, the hope of a more just and more human political and economic order.
This person, whom the world considers scarcely human, wishes and is able to humanize the world. They are a sign of contradiction before which each of us is obliged to take a stand.
In their presence, each of us is returned to our own conscience and our own sincerity. Each must descend into the "chamber" of their heart and ask: What matters in life—in my life, in our life? Am I still capable of believing in the other and loving them, or am I afraid to meet them? Afraid they will show me the truth? Afraid of change?
The handicapped person returns me to my source of unity, demands from me reconciliation, the unification of myself. The source of unity, of peace, of love is within me.
We have said that the handicapped person reorients the values of this world toward a new order. These new values are essentially the Gospel values that Jesus revealed to us.
We have not yet spoken of the Gospel or of Jesus, because in this reflection we wanted to discover the values present in us. We have followed the path of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, speaking with Jesus without recognizing him. We can say with them: "Our hearts burned within us as he spoke to us..."
Are we ready to recognize His direct action even in the person with severe disability?
Jesus accompanies us always when we seek truth. It is he who inspires us when we struggle for the promotion of the human person, for justice, for values that do not perish and do not fade. He is the head of the new world where muscles and elbows no longer count, but only the sincerity of the heart. It is in this world of Jesus that the person with disability takes their full place and is treated as the incarnation of God in our midst.
The entire Gospel is full of examples of the attitude we must have toward the most diminished persons. It is the same attitude Jesus expects from us. "Whatever you do (or fail to do) for the least of these, you do (or fail to do) for me." Jesus always identifies himself with those who do not possess the values of this world. He contests these values, overturns them as he overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple at Jerusalem.
The person with mental disability always amazes us when we recognize God's work in them.
With all his life, his death, and his resurrection, he showed there is only one truth—his truth—because he is the Truth. Everything that is not truth reveals itself as false; what the world inflates (beauty, wealth, knowledge) bursts before him and disappears.
Jesus himself marveled one day at his Father's work, which "brings down the powerful from their thrones and sends the rich away empty," and he exclaimed: "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to the little children" (Luke 10:21). The things revealed to the little ones are the values the world ignores or refuses to recognize.
The person with mental disability always amazes us when we recognize God's work in them. Here we are called into question once again. Before the person with disability, we cannot but ask ourselves: where is our faith? Do we truly believe in God the creator who creates with love? Do we believe his creatures are his living images? Do we believe in the intimate unity between him and us, in the depths of ourselves? Are we ready to recognize his direct action in the other? Even in the person with severe disability?
Here we touch the heart of our problem. Here our faith is truly at stake. It is Jesus in the handicapped person who asks us: "Do you believe in me?" "Do you love me more than all others?" To believe in the person without believing in Jesus in them is to betray faith, to reduce the person's transcendence to their functions, to break that unique bond with God who gives us his life and allows us to hope for union with him for eternity.
Jesus in us is that depth within ourselves that we sought at the beginning of this reflection. We cannot touch it alone. It is he who comes toward us, who touches us from within, who shows us the truth and unites us with others. The consequence of original sin is the inner incommunicability between human beings. Only Jesus, who restored this communication, makes communion between people possible. It is the mystery of the Eucharist and of sacramental communion. One Jesus unites us because we are one in him. The unity of humanity and thus of the Church is Jesus himself—he is the only source of unity.
The person with mental disability has an advantage over others. Since their mental capacity for reasoning is diminished, they seem more transparent and more receptive to the inspirations of the Spirit of Jesus who lives in them.
The first human being opposed God through reasoning. Proud of their ability to know and understand everything, to be like God. We, who have normal mental health, are tempted by that same serpent even today. And we let ourselves be carried away by this idea so willingly. This great gift of God—the capacity to think—has become for us an instrument of sin and curse. It is the filter that does or does not let through the good intentions God awakens in the heart.
The person with mental disability is more spontaneous, more direct, has fewer obstacles to overcome when they wish to express themselves. Yet we do not understand them because we consider them through our own mental categories. I cannot forget the many cases I have witnessed where it was clear that Jesus touched the heart of a child. Especially at the moment of communion. I remember a girl who did not speak, did not move, did nothing—who manifested her deep joy with a cry and luminous smile when she experienced her First Communion; or a boy who gave no one peace throughout the mass, who became completely calm after communion. These are only outward signs, but they allow us to suppose an inner event has taken place. In the end, it is only with faith that we can recognize God's presence in them.
Do our church communities have sufficient faith to welcome Jesus who lives, who speaks, who manifests himself through the person with disability?
The problem becomes acute when parents ask for the sacraments for their disabled children. One can understand the old priests who fear they might desecrate the sacraments. But has not God himself profaned himself more by giving us Jesus as food? And if it is Jesus who wishes to visit each of us, who will have the audacity to prevent him? If this happens, it means the Church follows too closely the values and reasoning of the world and is not yet the Church of the Gospel. Jesus himself said:
"Let the children come to me and do not prevent them, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
When can we say the handicapped person brings unity in the Church? Always when we are in the presence of a Church that is true, sincere, Gospel-centered. But the Church is us, each of us. The unity of the Church depends on us, on our inner unity, on our union with Jesus, on our faith and our love. The handicapped person teaches us as Saint Paul taught the Corinthians: "Three things remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love" (13:13).
by Father Joseph Mihelcic s.j., 1987
