"There exists a great and yet everyday mystery. All men share in it, but few pause to reflect on it. Almost everyone simply takes it as it comes and feels no wonder at all. This mystery is time. Calendars and clocks measure it, in units of little meaning, because we all know that sometimes a single hour can feel like an eternity, while another passes in an instant...it depends on what we live in that hour. Because time is life.
And life dwells in the heart..."
from Momo by M. Ende
My time with Faith and Light was truly a season of living—of faces, of joy—held carefully in the heart and visited often by memory, a place where I go to greet friends who shaped me.
It was a time when I, a young girl, spent my adolescence and early adulthood in the gatherings, celebrations, and pilgrimages of Faith and Light. Cuneo, Assisi, the Simplon, Naples, Budapest...trains, buses, cars, planes, all to reach our meetings, to share days together, to taste friendship. A world opened before me—one of suffering, of absence, of sacrifice, of silence...a reality I was beginning to touch firsthand, and one that drew me deeper because it revealed a humanity I had never encountered and breathed a new fragrance of spiritual life.
The world did not see, did not notice the steps, the presence of these young people, these families, these wives and husbands who were "different"—where life flowed, but in a different key.
Jean Vanier's books, read and reread. The journal "Shadows and Light" awaited eagerly in the mailbox. Evenings spent in preparation meetings, in formation, in sharing. Large celebration days with friends from different cities. Hours spent in family homes drinking coffee, celebrating a birthday, eating together. The famous "fourth moment."During Faith and Light gatherings, three communal moments take place: Welcome and Exchange, Celebration, and Prayer. The fourth moment includes all activities—personal or group—that happen outside the meeting: phone calls, visits to families, responding to S.O.S. calls, pizza dinners, walks, camping...Together with some friends, we felt this was the most important, the most real, the freest from fine words, from beautiful theories, from easy enthusiasm—because it was only there, in the everyday, that you touched difference with your hands and were changed by it.
Read also: They Opened My Eyes
Those hours are the ones that marked me in a particular way. I feel that through constant encounter with certain families, a part of me was almost blessed. Perhaps that word is too strong, yet it captures well my recognition, my gratitude toward the names, the faces, the situations.... Then came my leaving Marzocca, moving to Bologna, working yesterday at the Telefono Azzurro, today in schools, in professional training and in work for a human rights association...all of it lived, though, with that desire for encounter, for welcome, for the pursuit of justice that Faith and Light gave me as a gift. "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me" (Mt. 25:40). This Gospel phrase becomes clearer with time. It remains fundamental in my life today—to keep present (with humility) the value of the "small" in every situation, in every context, in every place, and especially in recognizing and caring for my own smallness, my fragility, my fear.
This is why I never feel separated from what we call "Faith and Light," because Faith and Light inhabits me still, though in new ways and on different paths.
Writing these few lines has moved me deeply.... Thank you for this chance to share, and my warm greetings to all the friends, near and far, with whom I have walked.
Tell Us About It
Group homes, welcome centers, schools, and other initiatives—serving people with disabilities—that have impressed you in a positive way.
We would be glad to tell their story.
