The purpose of this gathering is to give all of us—whatever our handicap—the chance to experience an intense moment of prayer and joy. In that time, we will discover the love and hope that Jesus offers us through His Church.
This pilgrimage must serve two purposes at once. For parents and their handicapped children, it should strengthen faith. But it must also speak to the whole Church, calling it to rediscover what Jesus revealed: that the smallest and the weakest hold a privileged place.
The pilgrimage must say clearly: handicapped people belong in the Church. Nothing—no condition, no circumstance—can prevent God from giving each person His Holy Spirit.
As brothers and sisters in Jesus, they must be recognized as such. Each carries his or her own particular mission. And each must be welcomed into the heart of our communities: parishes, groups, movements, all of them.
In this spirit, the pilgrimage will be a true testimony of the Church—a witness to the world, which has lost its joy and hardened itself with materialism.
Renewal and reconciliation lie at the heart of this initiative. Only God can transform our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh—if we ask Him with trust and without ceasing.
His tenderness will allow us to be reconciled with ourselves, with life, with its difficulties and sorrows, with all those around us—those we have hurt, and those who have hurt us.
But the pilgrimage is not an end in itself.
The gathering for reconciliation must not be a flash in the pan, leaving handicapped people and their families in even greater loneliness than before.
For this reason, the communities that come to life during the pilgrimage must continue to live on. They must deepen the new bonds of friendship they have formed, and in doing so, bear witness to the Good News that Jesus brings to us still today.
In Faith and Light.