I found it striking that this expanded editorial assignment came to me not through your bright, ringing voice, Mariangela. It is strange, too, to walk this path in Faith and Light, Shadows and Light, the Carriage without your presence. For me and for so many, you were a guiding light, a devoted and attentive friend, a source of motivation—a wellspring of disruptive ideas and poignant reflection, companion in countless joyful, irreplaceable experiences.
You know well that one of my many limits is the ability to sum things up. It is truly difficult for me to capture in a few lines the experiences I carry in my heart—as a friend of Faith and Light, as a community leader, as a volunteer and friend of the Carriage, and as your friend. I can tell you truly that in each of these roles I discovered a "scar" you left on me, one that has changed me in ways perhaps even you cannot fully know.
The Meeting (with Faith and Light, with the Carriage, with a New Life)
It was 1995. I was going through a difficult time, searching for some kind of existential direction, and I decided to commit a year of civil service to the Carriage.
My friendship with Lalla—one of your many nieces—brought me to that residential community and introduced me to Faith and Light. She had told me about this grand adventure that you and a few others had started here in Italy. Living in community at the Carriage and hearing Matteo—another of your nephews—tell stories of those "heroic" early years, of founding the first communities and the first field experiences, had helped me think of "this Mariangela" as a figure to look up to, a kind of celebrity.
I had seen the Carriage young people off on their journey to Assisi for the 1995 national pilgrimage, and I met you for the first time at the foot of the bus. White hair—whiter than white—a piercing gaze, and a disarming smile. "So you're the famous Filippo?" Excuse me? Famous, me? No, surely it's you we've just been saying is a Faith and Light celebrity... And right there you caught me off guard, flipping my whole sense of things upside down, seeing details others usually missed, surprising me with your simplicity and your way of cutting straight to the heart of things.
That 1995 was truly a turning point for me. I found new purpose, I grasped what mattered most in life, I began to feel part of a "community" with many people searching for simple, important things: friendship, welcome, shared life, joy.
Your Gaze and Your Smile
What I always admired most was the way you could lay people bare—help them set aside the armor of defenses and clichés that blocked genuine relationship and true knowing. You could do it the same way with us friends, with parents, and above all with the young people. When you called them to the center of the circle, the way you looked at them and smiled created moments of real communion even with those who couldn't speak or didn't want to engage with the outside world. You had a gift for making people feel important and worthy of attention, even those who usually stood apart or kept themselves apart. And you did it all without grand words—just with your voice, your gaze, your smile. In a word: charisma.
Your Testimony
I never knew you as the founder of the community, as national leader, as Chicca's mother, as the one who started the field experiences. I knew you with white hair, with no formal role in Faith and Light, as a "historical" friend of the community at a moment when Santa Silvia was struggling, and Valentina, a few others, and then myself found ourselves "guiding" a transition—perhaps renewing the styles and introducing new ways of being together and building community.
What won me over at the start was precisely you longtime members of the community: the mothers, the fathers, the friends, and the enthusiasm and joy you brought in welcoming—sometimes clumsily—what we newcomers proposed: cooking competitions, sharing moments, outings, Gospel mimes. No judgment, no pretense of teaching from the height of your experience, only absolute trust and a willingness to see this beautiful and important story continue.
I have often been held back by others' judgment or by other constraints; Faith and Light teaches me daily how much more important it is to live in the present, to savor moments of friendship fully, to surrender to what the community asks of us. In this I learned from many teachers of life, not just you, and I want to name them: Maria Stella, Italia, Palmina and Agostino, Lucia and Vittorio, Italia, Rina and Antonio, Corona, Titti. With you and alongside them, I learned so much. Thank you!
Drinking Companions
I'm getting too serious and celebratory. I don't think that would please you, given how you were! Well then, let's remember some of your weaknesses too. One of the things that created a real personal bond between us was that you were always on my phone tree. Those calls were also occasions for some gossip, a colorful comment, or a laugh that was maybe a bit over the top. You'd often finish with "Who's bringing the wine?" And at the gathering you'd come close to me: "You brought your wine...we can't stand what So-and-so brought!" and off we'd go laughing. One of the last times we saw each other at the Carriage you confessed to me, "I'd really love to come over to the Ascenzis' for a few laughs."
I like to think I was a friend to you—sometimes messy and scattered, but... cheerful!
Always Looking Beyond...
We often drew you into our expanded team meetings to help us understand our path, to bring depth and reflection to our community life.
We came to you to name our daily struggles, to share the strain of carrying forward our activities, to count our meager resources. And your answer was always to think from other angles, not to maintain or patch things up but to push further, to go beyond. "We need to reach out to new families," "I heard about a boy nearby we should go meet"...surprising us again! We complain about not having the energy to keep the community going and you tell us to expand our welcome?
Only now, perhaps, am I beginning to understand that you were right and that you were trying to pass on to us your mission: never stop, know people, share the richness of the Faith and Light experience with as many as possible.
Our Young People
It is almost unnecessary to recall who was at the center of your attention, your charisma, your life: "Our young people"...you truly felt them as yours, the way each of us learns to do once we become part of this extended family. One year we decided together to make "The Future" our theme. For me it was one of the most important experiences in Faith and Light and brought me much closer to the families in our community. We held at least four meetings where we spoke only with parents about what would happen after.
You were firm, decisive, and as always convincing in speaking about how "Our young people need to find their own independence, especially while we mothers and fathers are still alive, able to have them home on weekends, able to visit them." At the time, only Corona among the community parents had taken this step with Paola, and she shared that after the initial disorientation it was something she lived with in a positive way. I remember the distress of other parents, some of whom said honestly, "But without him at home, what do I do?" It brings me joy now to see that, sadly as many of them are no longer with us, their children have found that independence at the Carriage.
Something Broke Inside Me
Where did you find that fire, that passion, that energy? I had the chance to hear you tell about your experience at Lourdes.
You spoke of arriving with your defenses up, of carrying a great rage that needed to come out—a mother seeking answers, bringing more negativity than hope to Lourdes. And then "something broke inside me." You understood that you had to transform that rage into passion for others with stories like yours, that thirst for justice into positive energy.
You managed to draw that out of yourself and share it with others, to move those you met with a force that many of us have felt. I knew you twenty-five years after that conversion experience, I spent another twenty years with you, and I can testify that the spring of life and hope in you never ran dry.
"You Have to Learn Too!"
We often asked you to share, to witness, to help us understand... The last time I asked you, you answered, "I'll come gladly, but you have to learn too!"
In the field experiences, the weekends, the pilgrimages, and the year-end gatherings, there is the moment of sending forth. I believe deeply that your invitation to the great family of people who knew you is precisely this: "Learn too!"—an invitation to continue and renew what you showed us through your life: to dedicate yourself to an idea and a mission for others, to let yourself be drawn in by those around you, to let the heart speak first, to seek simplicity, to transform rage into passion and hope, to love even those so different from us, to open new paths without fear, to step out of the rails of your own "normalcy," to know how to ask others for help, to always look beyond the daily grind, to build true communities of encounter and life, to know how to notice and honor the small ones, to witness the joy and beauty of Faith and Light.
A demanding, stimulating, and engaging invitation that calls us to put all our energy toward the future, toward hope, toward the desire to renew and share all the beautiful and important things we have lived through in Faith and Light, and to answer it as we have already written to you in the prayer with which we bid you farewell together, that last time: Thank you, and we love you!
Filippo Ascenzi, 2014