I always feel a bit awkward when someone asks me to explain what Faith and Light is. You're supposed to answer with a single word: an association? a movement? a spirit?
For me, Faith and Light is: faces I have learned to see, names I have learned to pronounce, people I have learned to meet.
What makes Faith and Light distinctive is its network of small, unusual communities. Each community brings together three kinds of members in equal measure: people marked by intellectual disability, their families (parents, relatives, brothers and sisters), and friends—mostly young people. The members span every age, every level of ability, every background and walk of life.
Members of a Faith and Light community do not live under the same roof. They gather on a regular basis. Together they pray, reflect, and celebrate.
The person with intellectual disability stands at the heart of Faith and Light's message—not to make Faith and Light a "special movement for the mentally handicapped at the expense of integration," but because their presence is a constant summons to let ourselves be challenged by the spirit of the Beatitudes through encounter with the other.