“You who are assisted by others, in reality, with your testimony and with your life, pushed into the history of us: it is you who brought us forward, you are our strength. Each of us has experienced, at least once in one’s life, that from your testimony, from the effort to live, from the abuse of having to face life, the most beautiful smile comes”. The message that the bishop may be enclosed in this reflection, Monsignor Serafino Parisihe addressed to the people present last night on the number Numistrano to participate in the “Diocesan Jubilee together with the people with disabilities” who recorded the presence of hundreds of faithful for this moment of strong spirituality, but also of sharing and joy, as well as profound emotion.
“I want to address, first of all, to you a thought of gratitude -said the bishop by addressing those present -: to you that tonight you are here to testify, despite the complexity of life and the problems that there are, at so many levels, the strength you put in order to live, in order to deal with everything, the difficulties, so as not to give it to the negative events. I want to thank you because you are here to witness the hope, this vital that pushes us to go on.
“Then – said Monsignor Parisi by addressing the accompanying persons and the numerous volunteers of the various associations operating in the area -, I turn the other thought to you who are continually alongside these people. You know that in the Bible there is a very strong image that is that of the Cyrenaeus who – tells us the text of the Gospel – was back at the end of the day tired of the works he had done and, despite his tiredness, Taken the cross of Jesus on his shoulders, he shares the cross, makes the cross of the other less heavy. With your passion, with your dedication, with your care and with your concern which, however, this evening I would really like to call, on the positive side, hope. I imagine the concern of a mother who takes care of her son, who becomes a person who lives a amplified motherhood, because he gives birth to a life and, then, to this life must still give assistance as if it were still maternal breast within which there is the possibility of life, care, tenderness. I imagine that for a mother what has been called the ‘after us’ has notes of anguish. Because thinking what it will be, how it will be, where it will be, who will be the life of my son, or in any case of my dear, is truly a strong thought. How can you live this thought? Certainly in passion, in attachment “.
Hence the solicitation “to social policies capable of taking on the present and the future of these people who ask to live with the dignity they have from the beginning – underlined the bishop -: the one that the Lord has imprinted the man in his image and likeness. And this difficulty, anguish, this thought for the future, tonight I like to decline it as hope. The hope, that is, of a better future. By modeling the world according to the heart of God. And then the hope of the future is the construction of the future, it is daily commitment because this perspective of stability, of serenity for the time that will come, and which will be after us for these people, can be a reality “.
Taking care of the other as the Lord does with each of us, therefore, and that “means taking charge of the life of the other, making himself responsible for the other, but, at the same time -concluded Monsignor Parisi -, means making himself responsible for the future of the person who needs me” because “within a suffered existence there is a person who lives, who wants to live, who must live, uncomfortable by our accommodation. On me and on all believers. that your suffering life is really stimulating to our passiveness and can make it rejoice, filling the life of each of us with meaning.
The Eucharistic celebration was translated by an interpreter in the language of signs for the deaf people present at the Holy Mass which was also broadcast on live television and social.