In that afternoon, Mariangela Bertolini was recounting her experience as the mother of Chicca, who had been born with a severe disability, and how her life as a woman, wife and mother had been reshaped by this event. Founder of Fede e Luce in Italy, she was sharing with us her wonder at the fruitfulness of life of this great family. I had been invited to a formation event in via Cola di Rienzo, more than twenty years ago. Her words had brought me into contact with the depths of my conscience, as only truth can do, as when it suddenly becomes clear that our entire life is woven into the paschal mystery. During the break I approached Mariangela and confessed to her with pain: «You know… I am 21, I came back to the Church about a year ago and I am living with joy the beauty of belonging to Fede e Luce. I love the "boys and girls", but I am also afraid… if I knew I was carrying a child with a disability, I think I might have an abortion». She looked at me with love and said: «Disability is not a good thing, it is not something to be desired. I understand your thinking, and if what you describe were to happen, I could not judge you. I ask only one thing of you. Remember, if it ever happens and you cannot manage… if you still wanted to let the child be born… if you wish, I will take the child myself». Her words pierced me.
I could not believe in an abstract God, I needed to touch him, to let myself be touched and to be healed.
I could not believe in an abstract God, I needed to touch him, to let myself be touched and to be healed.The Word of God is living and effective, it is a creative Word that shapes, heals, and is certainly such also when it takes flesh in the life of a person. Mariangela's testimony kindled in me the awareness that God can expand the human heart to a measure of love that surpasses creaturely limits, and so I desired to transcend these limits to love, precisely in order to welcome and embrace every human limit. For the same desire, two years earlier, in a hospital ward at the bedside of my sick grandmother, my vocation to become a doctor had blossomed. The interior movement toward Love has been nourished by countless testimonies and words spoken through the lives of my friends in Fede e Luce: every boy and girl, parent and friend «has been for me brother, sister and mother», as Jesus would say, today my spouse.
During my novitiate in the monastery, I was asked to recount the story of my calling to a large group gathered in our sanctuary. When I speak of my return to faith, I cannot leave aside the experience of God and of communion I had in Fede e Luce. I truly needed the "boys and girls", their affection, their embraces, their welcome, their laughter and their tears, their friendship. I could not believe in an abstract God, I needed to touch him, to let myself be touched and to be healed. The radicality of the Love that calls me to itself leads me to express with deep gratitude that the "boys and girls" saved me, that without Fede e Luce I perhaps would not be, that they were for me like a mother, for they made me reborn to new life, in the tenderness and reciprocity of friendship. With a certain sense of vertigo, I was telling the people listening to me how so much grace and joy had entered my life through creatures who are very fragile in the eyes of the world, or at times even considered useless and meaningless, because of the limits of their existence.
Like the concentric waves generated by a pebble thrown into a still pool, the movement provoked by Fede e Luce spread to many other encounters and experiences within which the mysterious design of my particular vocation to Augustinian monastic life was revealed to me. Augustine conceived of the monk as the man who seeks God together with his brothers, according to the inspiring words from the Acts of the Apostles: «The multitude of those who had come to faith had one heart and one soul»: monk from monos, understood as one who in God is made one with his brothers.
Like the concentric waves, the movement provoked by Fede e Luce spread to many other encounters and experiences within which the mysterious design of my vocation to Augustinian monastic life was revealed to me
Like the concentric waves, the movement provoked by Fede e Luce spread to many other encounters and experiences within which the mysterious design of my vocation to Augustinian monastic life was revealed to meIn the daily laboratory of charity, faith and hope that is the monastic community, life becomes a prayer of praise and intercession, of offering and communion with every person on earth. From here the heart continues to be expanded to learn to welcome every fragility as a sacred ground of grace, mercy and resurrection. Even in the monastery I recognize the fragrance of Fede e Luce, and the community as the place of celebration and forgiveness. «Will you sing the Community's song for us?». From the earliest experiences until today, it happens that my fellow sisters (both elderly and young) ask me to animate a recreation or a gathering with the laity with the song of Fede e Luce. I try in vain to excuse myself and then I give in to the request, laughing inwardly as I consider how Fede e Luce stays stuck to me.
Despite the physical distance and the sobriety of communications that characterizes our way of life, I never cease to marvel at the faithfulness and affection of my friends. The immediate and deep intimacy I experience at each of their visits or phone calls confirms to me that even from afar we continue to walk together, and likewise the joyful welcome between them and my Sisters is the sign of a family that has grown wider.
As sweet as it ever is to rest in Carlo's embrace (we have no grilles to mark the enclosure!), so great is the desire to be spiritually close to each one. During a recent hospitalization of Pablo, our friend Antonio, who often went to visit him, gave us the gift of being able to speak on the phone, but words were not enough for us… So I began to sing Piccolo mio and then Un milione di amici: hearing Pablo's voice joining in the singing is truly a gift from Heaven. Heaven, eternity… that longing for fullness of life and communion that we carry written in our hearts manifests itself in the humble folds of our daily life and makes us fall in love, if we recognize and welcome its invitations. One memory remains in my heart, luminous and alive like a promise… Summer camp at Passoscuro, we were all bathing in the sea together, Pablo and Carlo too were light in the water. We laugh, we play, a ring-around-the-rosy forms freely and we sing. I sense that if already now, in mutual love, weariness, pain and fragility are welcomed, lifted and consoled, of what and how great an untroubled beauty will be the communion of Paradise.
Even now it is possible to contemplate the traces of this beauty. In his commentary on Psalm 44, Augustine writes: «Jesus Christ is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in the arms of his parents; beautiful in miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not heeding death, beautiful in laying down life and beautiful in taking it up again; beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven». Rita tells that when Pablo was a child, asked by the priest who had to verify whether he had sufficient knowledge of the faith to receive his first communion, «Do you know who Jesus is?», Pablo answered: «Yes, it's me!».
«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 little ones» (Matthew 11:25). I imagine Pablo, as so many times, glowing with satisfaction and asking me: «Am I beautiful? Say it again! Say it again!». Yes, Pablo, you are beautiful. Yes, Carlo, Eleonora, Franco, Luana, Maria Laura, Luciano, Teresa, Mario, Marco, Marina, Paolo, Simona, Emilia, Roberta… you are all so beautiful, and I thank you with my whole life for having made me fall in love with the Eternal Beauty of God.
