«Give me, Lord, a spare wing,» goes the now-famous prayer of Don Tonino Bello.
Some have only one wing, and it is battered, marked, wounded—yet with that single broken wing they reach out to their brothers and sisters, often more capably than those blessed with two. They know how to work their damaged wing among the rocks of life.
In the realm of solidarity and love, we are not bound by the rigid, cruel rules of an efficiency-obsessed world. That world teaches us that those who produce the most are the swift, the powerful, those who match some polished image of perfection.
But the hand extended to a brother in need may belong to someone disabled in body, or caught in some other form of existential disadvantage.
Madia believes in fraternity, feels it, lives it with the naturalness and constancy of the sun—you can see it in her open, radiant smile.
Madia, a creature burning with restless energy, was struck by polio at age two. She carries the marks of that illness, though her walk is steady enough.
For many years, that handicap made her feel penalized in countless areas of life.
At a young age, her mother dies. Madia lives through this loss with deep trauma, and her character hardens—a consequence of knowing she was different, of losing her mother's presence. She becomes someone difficult to be around, her defenses always ready to strike.
She wraps herself in the role of the harsh woman.
When asked today when she began serving others, Madia says it always seemed natural to her to run to help—following the example of her parents. But when she digs deeper into memory, she finds her «first time.»
After a long hospital stay, a nurse showed her tenderness. Madia felt the need to repay that gift with gratitude. This is where it begins—the slow shedding, piece by piece, of that tough shell behind which she had hidden for years.
When the ANFFAS center opens in her town, her service becomes more systematic, taking on the role of animator. Here she discovers she has value as a person. She feels useful. She recognizes some of her own talents.
It is a gradual journey, one that moves through many experiences. With growing clarity, Madia sees a path ahead. She feels that the Lord loves her in a particular way, and bit by bit, she becomes a witness to that love for those she meets on her road.
One road leads through her parish, where she works as a catechist. This work helps her know herself more deeply, with growing responsiveness to the gaze of Jesus' love upon her.
Soon Madia discovers two special callings in her journey of following the Father: a particular attention to families, and a deep tenderness for people with intellectual disabilities.
She knows families from the inside—their struggles with drugs, alcohol, separation. Through after-school programs, she draws near to the children caught in these situations.
In her catechism class, she is given—almost by chance—young people with intellectual disabilities to teach. She approaches this reality with only the «school» of the heart, without institutional support from the parish or any formal training.
The world of intellectual disability meets her in all its mysterious complexity and wins her over. It becomes the milestone that orients her life. For in being with the person wounded in mind, she lives something extraordinary: the dimension of suffering is filled—as Cardinal Martini has said—by Grace and by joy.
This, perhaps, is Madia's final harbor: she does not practice charity as service-provision, does not «care for» in the clinical sense. Instead, she contemplates the Cross in hope of the Resurrection.
- Vanna Rossani, 2001
