December 5, 2021 - "International Day of Persons with Developmental Differences"

Last Friday, December 3, we celebrated the International Day of Persons with Developmental Differences.  Pope Francis had an important message for those with developmental differences.  I want to present today two points that he made in that address and also provide his commentary on those points.  My source for this is the Vatican website.
 
The Holy Father began by saying to those who live with any condition of disability that the Church loved them and needs each one of them for the fulfillment of the Church’s mission at the service of the Gospel.  Let look now at these two points and his remarks about them.
 
Jesus, our friend
Jesus is our friend! That is what he told his disciples at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 15:14). His words also speak to us; they shed light on the mystery of our close relationship to him as members of his Church. “Friendship with Jesus cannot be broken. He never leaves us, even though at times it appears that he keeps silent. When we need him, he makes himself known to us; he remains at our side wherever we go” (Christus Vivit, 154). We Christians have received a gift: access to the heart of Jesus and friendship with him. It is a privilege and a blessing, and it becomes our vocation: we are called to be friends of Jesus!
 
Having Jesus as a friend is an immense consolation. It can turn each of us into a grateful and joyful disciple, one capable of showing that our frailties are no obstacle to living and proclaiming the Gospel. In fact, a trusting and personal friendship with Jesus can serve as the spiritual key to accepting the limitations that all of us have, and thus to be at peace with them. This in turn can lead to a joy that “fills hearts and lives” (Evangelii Gaudium, 1), since, as a great exegete has written, friendship with Jesus is “a spark that kindles the fire of enthusiasm” (Rudolf Schnackenberg, Amicizia con Gesú, Brescia 2007, p. 68. [The Friend We Have in Jesus, Westminster: John Knox Press, 1997]).
 
The Church is your home
Baptism makes each one of us a full-fledged member of the Church community, so that all of us, without exclusion or discrimination, can say: “I am Church!” The Church is truly your home! We, all of us together, are Church, because Jesus chose to be our friend. The Church – and this is something we need to learn more and more in the synodal process we have begun – “is not a community of people who are perfect, but a community of disciples on a journey, who follow the Lord because they know they are sinners and in need of his forgiveness” (Catechesis, 13 April 2016). In this people which, guided by God’s word, advances amid the events of history, “everyone has a part to play; no one is a mere extra” (Address to the Faithful of Rome, 18 September 2021). For this reason, each of you is also called to make his or her own contribution to the synodal journey.

I am convinced that, if it truly becomes “a participative and inclusive ecclesial process” (Synod of Bishops, Preparatory Document. For a Synodal Church: Communion and Participation, and Mission, 20 April 2020), the Church community will be genuinely enriched.
 
Sad to say, even today many of you “are treated as foreign bodies in society”; you can “feel that [you] exist without belonging and without participating” and that “much still prevents [you] from being fully enfranchised” (Fratelli Tutti, 98). Discrimination continues to be all too present at various levels of society; it feeds on prejudice, ignorance and a culture that finds it hard to appreciate the inestimable value of each person. In particular, the continuing tendency to regard disabilities – which are the result of the interaction between social barriers and each person's limitations – as if they were a kind of disease, contributes to keeping your lives separate and stigmatizing you.
 
As far as the Church’s life is concerned, “the worst form of discrimination… is the lack of spiritual care” (Evangelii Gaudium, 200). Sometimes, as certain of you have unfortunately experienced, this has taken the form of denying access to the sacraments. The Church’s magisterium is very clear in this area, and recently the Directory for Catechesis stated explicitly that “no one can deny the sacraments to persons with disabilities” (No. 272). When we experience such discrimination, it is precisely our friendship with Jesus, that all of us have received as an undeserved gift, which redeems us and enables us to perceive differences as a treasure. For Jesus does not call us servants, women and men of lesser dignity, but friends: confidants worthy of knowing all that he has received from the Father (cf. Jn 15:15).
 
Until next week,
Fr. John