Blessed fragility

If there is something wrong with you, it is you who must try to overcome your limits, but sometimes we forget that certain weaknesses cannot be overcome, they can only be welcomed.
The more you hide them, the more they devastate you inside because, as we know well, fragility, the real one, is precisely the internal one that is often not seen and can be pretended to be hidden - also because it is often less easy to legitimize - but that doesn't mean it disappears . If we look around, we see a planet crying out its evil, we see a world in pieces, we are all increasingly fragile, even our brotherhood and the Church are.

At the hermitage, fragility is at home: those who usually stay on the margins, here instead are at the center. We see a lot of physical fragility in the sick children that we welcome together with their families, the fragility of living in a suspended and uncertain time that does not know what tomorrow will be like.
Yet here the children do not feel sick, they feel like children and if, with our eyes we see the disabilities of the children who come here every day, with our hearts we always only see people who can take part in a home, be responsible for a project common. There is no one so poor that they cannot give anything, there is no fragility that prevents you from picking up your pieces and sharing them with others.
In this very way, children help us to see a new opportunity in limitations and wounds, they teach us not to stop and to trust. In the fragility of a sick body, asking for help and relying on others make often taken-for-granted daily moments stronger, helping us to need others. Fragility allows you to ask for help, to hold out your hand and see that there is someone on the other side because the truth of life is that we are not alone and we are loved like this, even when we are fragile! Blessed fragility if it trains us to be together, not to be enough for ourselves. Certain things cannot be achieved only with intelligence, but there is a real need to have the experience of feeling like this, vulnerable, and to take those small steps that you can only take when you feel loved, not for what you have and what do, but for who you are. We all give our best precisely when we do not feel judged, but loved, when we find the right place for us: in this, disability amplifies true realities for everyone because alone we are all a little disabled.

Blessed fragility when you would like to take it away and be strong and instead you take it and bring it to God to discover that he is the first fragile one who breaks every day, God-child who asks us to be welcomed and, after the resurrection, Jesus shows still the signs of his fragility and asks us to look at his hands pierced by the nails of the cross. Salvation does not come with gestures of power, but with wounds of love. Love makes you fragile. Love, however, saves us and we experience fragility more and more because we can rely less and less on our own strengths and security, but so that the Lord can do more and more, because we can trust him.

Fraternity of the Arsenal of Harmony
Focus
NP December 2023

Since 5 September 2016 the Tower of the hermitage of Pecetto (TO) has become the Arsenal of Harmony and is the home of a small Sermig fraternity,
The Vita ai bambini project is hosted in its rooms: it is a residential reception aimed at children suffering from serious pathologies.
For the most part these are foreign children and young people who live in the poorest countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South America.
The children are followed by international associations that work to protect the rights of sick children.
Sermig offers residential hospitality and accompaniment to the sick child and his family for the entire period necessary for treatment, but also for subsequent periodic checks.
In short, support and guidance in a difficult, delicate and particularly vulnerable period.
Not only that, the Arsenale dell'Armonia is a point of reference for many disabled children and adults in the area, offering them work opportunities related to food processing (bakery, pastry shop, ice cream shop, honey, preserves...) and moments of shared commitment in home care.
Finally, the hermitage is a home for everyone: the large green spaces, the forest, the orchard also offer young people the opportunity to rediscover contact with nature, moments of training and an encounter with God.

The sporting exploits of Luca, who works in the Eremo pastry shop, told by his father

When you have a child, it takes time to get to know him and take the right measures.
Then he discovers that he doesn't act just like his brothers.
So you start going to doctors who, in the end, tell you that your son has behavioral disorders and is autistic.
So what do you do? You try everything – and even more – to try to give him an acceptable future. Among many others we try to take him to the swimming pool.
Honestly, it seemed like the wrong idea to me, but when wives insist you have to obey.
After the first lessons, his instructor at the time told us that Luca had surprising aquatic skills. Plus, we realized that Luca really liked swimming. And so, we moved on with swimming.
After some time, his coach called us and proposed that we participate in the national competitions that would be held shortly in Livorno, competitions entirely dedicated to intellectual disabilities.
We only had one week's notice, but as they say... seize the moment and let's go.
Since then it has been a crescendo of emotions and wonderful opportunities, in and out of the water.
Luca always responded with a smile because he had found his place and his dimension.
Then one day ten years ago, during a training session in the pool in Chieri, they met a "strange" guy who, while Luca and his companions were swimming, passed underneath them with a huge fin.
From that meeting an unexpected proposal was born: «If you want, I'll teach you how to swim under water!».
This also seemed silly to me, but as I have done on previous occasions, I obeyed.
I remember Luca saying to his new coach Andrea one day: «You're taking me to fly underwater!». Listening to him, we all understood (including me) that this discipline had to become part of his world.
  improvements were continuous and daily and also had positive repercussions in everyday life.
Freediving gave him the opportunity to meet many friends who, like him - day after day - overcame their fears and exceeded their limits. And we with him.
I forgot... a few weeks ago in Lignano Sabbiadoro for the 1st World Championship of freediving and finswimming for disabled people he also became world champion of freediving in three specialties.

Alessandro Olivero