Dear friends of Faith and Light, I welcome this occasion of your 40th anniversary to offer you warm greetings and to share with you some thoughts on themes that lie close to all our hearts.
First, I want to share "a gift"—the richness of our precious Guidelines: *We Meet Jesus*. The word "disability" appears sparingly in the document, which might suggest an oversight. But a careful reading reveals something different: the Bishops propose a fresh vision for the entire Church on this matter. The guiding idea of the document is to rethink catechesis through an inclusive lens, where belonging to the Church's life involves everyone—including people with disabilities and their families.
This vision runs throughout the document: in the description of vulnerable realities, in pastoral care and attention, in the Church's concern for the poor and excluded, but also in a new vision of catechesis as proclamation and in the full participation of people with disabilities in the life of the community. This renewed catechesis calls for a broad network of collaboration—families, lay groups, religious congregations, and all other educational partnerships (n. 93). That means you. Let me walk through four steps together with you.
Dwelling with Hope in Our Time: A New Commitment to Evangelization
Contemporary "liquid" culture—as Bauman would say—or "throwaway" culture, in Pope Francis's words, challenges us and gives us a task: to show everyone that "no person is a treasure to be hidden." Sometimes when we look at young people and adults with disabilities, even in our parishes, we notice their limits, their fragility; we rely on outward signs. But the Guidelines urge us to encounter all people and discover that the other person is not their limitation, their fragility, or their disability. Rather, they are "a brother or sister in person" because we all share being persons created in God's image and likeness (n. 10). If faith for everyone is the encounter with Christ, we are called ever more to create Christian communities that include all people—through listening to Scripture, sharing in Sunday Eucharist, and living out charity. We must create spaces where people can dwell today, where the catechetical journey comes alive and where they experience in word and deed a living relationship with Jesus. "As one candle lights another, so faith kindles faith." In this way, the bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood that form can take on a different character where the last, the excluded, stand at the center (n. 12) and not at the margins of existence.
Proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus
The Guidelines for the Italian Bishops' decade tell us that fragility is "a school from which to learn" (EVBV, n. 54b). Together, we are called to educate our Church communities in this school, to value the active presence of people and families who live with fragility, illness, and precarity. We do this by strengthening the conviction that human beings have worth before God as persons—not for what they can produce. In harmony with the Church's journey, we are called increasingly to accompany families through life's crucial moments: when a diagnosis leaves us feeling limited and powerless, and right to the end. It becomes vital, then, to know how to value the spaces of real life through the methods you use. Spaces that could become welcoming places for catechesis, for listening to the Gospel, working together with communities, creating playful and sporting occasions.
Initiating, Accompanying, and Supporting the Experience of Faith
Catechesis is the primary task of the Christian community because it reflects the Church's maternal nature. The Guidelines push us toward a more decisive and communal action (EVBV n. 26) so that in Church communities, attention to and active involvement of people with disabilities and their families become ordinary practice, not occasional events. How? For example: by assisting priests and catechetical teams in the Christian initiation journeys of young people with disabilities (n. 58-59) who learn alongside all other young people; by helping the whole community shift its communication style through new languages and methods; by creating a sense of belonging to the group and community that continues beyond the initiation journey; by valuing ordinary active participation in Sunday Mass, that family gathering, and allowing the person with disability, by virtue of Baptism, to be an active agent in their own faith journey (n. 54) and to become an evangelizer themselves. Where? In the Parish—a home among the homes of the people. Not merely a place for ceremonies or sporadic events, but a welcoming environment of meaningful relationships and growth in independence (n. 55). We must therefore design and provide inclusive catechetical pathways and accessible resources that account for different disabilities and forms of communication (n. 56). Only this vision offered by the Guidelines helps us avoid seeing the person with disability as a problem and instead recognize them as a treasure to be shared.
Witnessing and Telling the Story: Forming Servants of the Gospel
This final section outlines the figure of the catechist-educator—the one who leads people to encounter the Master Jesus and knows how to witness to him with the joy of their own life in the Church community. New forms of accompaniment in faith take shape here (n. 67), ones that can tell the story of the saving encounter in different voices and ways. The Church's formative work requires, indeed, a plurality of ministries and roles to reflect the real life of communities.
The witness of the person with disability, the person who is fragile, must always be valued within communities and nurtured in every aspect of life (n. 71). For when we turn toward the other, we understand that "every human being is the object of the infinite tenderness of the Lord, and He himself dwells in their life." Jesus Christ shed his precious blood on the cross for that person. Beyond all appearance, each one is immensely sacred and deserves our love and our care. The calling to be authentic companions who announce the Risen Christ requires the effort to harmonize various languages so as to facilitate communication between people and the mystery of God, between persons and with the community. It seems urgent, then, to give full and genuine expression to the languages of faith—from the liturgical-symbolic to the experiential-symbolic—in ways that account for different learning styles and various disabilities (n. 73). We are called to exchange good practices so that we can develop the skills needed for a genuine inclusion of people with disabilities in the ordinary life of the community (n. 90).
I believe this is the great legacy that Jean Vanier and M. H. Mathieu left you, following in the footsteps of the Master who tells us: "I have given you an example, so that you should do as I have done to you" (Jn 13:15).
"Let us never forget that true power is service. We must care for people, cherish every person with love, especially children, the elderly, those who are most fragile and who are often at the margins" (Pope Francis). You are guardians and stewards of this. Make it a gift to your communities.
Sister Veronica Amata Donatello, CEI - UCN Coordinator of Catechesis for People with Disabilities