Free to be together

Here at the Madaba Arsenal we meet every day with a world that is different from ours in culture, traditions, faith, language. This meeting – before being met through words and actions – happens through silence, the sharing of daily life. Not a passive silence, but a silence made of observation, of listening, the silence of those who try to understand and grasp the beauty that is in the people who are welcoming us.

Upon our arrival we immediately understood that those “different” ones were us: women who ran a house and coordinated a service in person, Christians in a country where 97% of the population is Muslim, Italians who had moved to a place where many looked at Italy as a place to go to, not a place to leave. Here to serve the weakest, the rejected, the marginalized of society, because in those years people with disabilities were considered by almost everyone to be a bit of a shame to hide. Many people asked themselves: but what is behind their presence? We didn't answer with words, we let ourselves be observed. It didn't take long before people understood that behind our presence there was only the desire to love everyone, children and young people with disabilities, their families, in a transparent and spontaneous way.

And this has created and is creating encounters. And it has also made the Arsenal here in Jordan a home, which offers the people it welcomes 360-degree services to learn how to take care of themselves, to be together, to express themselves, to bring out the beauty that everyone has inside. We are not special people, on the contrary we are all normal people, with our defects, our falls, our misunderstandings. But every time we find ourselves in the dark, the Lord comes to take us back with his love, his mercy. And that love pushes us to start again. We are here because His love pushes us towards these children, gives us new ideas and energy every day to start over. And that push towards the little ones that the Lord puts on our path makes us go deeper also in the encounter with Him and in the mission that is entrusted to us. We are here as a fraternity, a fraternity that chooses to be together because each of us has strongly chosen Him. And for Him and with Him we are, for Him and with Him we go.

Day by day we learn from our children and young people the simplicity, the beauty of small things and in turn we give back to those we meet that experience of freedom that comes from being at service freely, without seeking anything in return. An experience that is a gift from the Lord. We experience in everyday life that it is not human abilities, intelligence, talents or even knowledge that give value to the person, but it is putting all these things at the service of the smallest and the weakest. Living in love, taking care of one’s own limit and that of the other, without denying it and without humiliating it, and without even considering it an obstacle in the encounter, restores dignity to each person and creates a way of life that is a seed of the Kingdom of God, which recognizes in the life of the other – whoever they are – the same Life (with a capital “V”) that flows in everyone.

Together we are sowing seeds of peace and we hope that these seeds can grow more and more, infect and attract more and more people to good.

NP December 2024
The Sermig Fraternity in Jordan