So impressed was I with their ministries that, some years ago, I asked Father Charles Rubey, the director of the Archdiocesan Office for Persons with Disabilities, and Father Joe Mulcrone, the priest responsible for the apostolate for Catholics who are deaf, to help me write a letter on ministry with and for persons with disabilities. They made some suggestions for a letter, but time slipped by without my following through. My recent pilgrimage to the Shrine of Lourdes with the Order of Malta brought to mind our conversations and their notes. This column will have to do for a more elaborate pastoral statement, lest I write nothing at all. Lourdes is a place of prayer: the Masses, the Rosary procession, the Way of the Cross, the Blessed Sacrament processions, the prayers at the baths. All these events are directed toward the sick and those with disabilities. Everything is arranged for their participation. Everyone else at Lourdes is at their disposition. Here at home, our places of worship and of gathering are now most often arranged so that those who are physically disabled can be present more easily. There is steady progress, marked each year with the celebration of Inclusion Sunday. But physical access needs to support an attitude that intentionally seeks to include those who are disabled for any reason: those who are born with disabilities, those disabled by street violence, by war, by the aging process, by debilitating disease. We challenge others to work together to develop this attitude because we are all in this together. The Body of Christ has many members. Each brings a gift that is a blessing for the others, even if the gift can sometimes be a source of sorrow or suffering for the one bringing it. The best people to speak about this ministry are mothers and fathers of disabled children. Then there are those charged with this pastoral responsibility in the Archdiocese. Sister Rosemary Connelly at Misericordia has opened her heart to many whom few care to befriend. Ministry is not just a matter of providing “services.” Ministry creates community, which is what Sister Rosemary does. Father Rubey has worked out of Catholic Charities for many years, years that have brought him into communities and families wrenched to the heart by the suicide of one of their members. Father Rubey knows how, with God’s help, to find ways for people to begin to put their own lives together again after the loss of a loved one to suicide. Father Joe Mulcrone has spent years living and working with people who are deaf. Because of him and those who help him, every major archdiocesan event is signed. These and many others whose life is shaped by these ministries deserve our love and gratitude. Some might begin these considerations with the virtue of justice: we should welcome everyone with respect, for everyone is made in God’s image and likeness. This is good as far as it goes. What goes farther is love, a desire to share all that one has been given by God and to receive freely whatever another wants to share. In the church, everyone gives and everyone receives. Everyone serves and everyone is served. This is the Gospel sense of inclusion. Everyone acts not to show what they can accomplish but to show what God does in using them for his purposes. Sometimes the action is diminished, whether physically or psychologically. Spiritual results, however, fall outside of normal measurements; they are measured by God. We are daily surrounded by blessings to which we remain too often oblivious. We forget what we take for granted: the blessings of nature, of our loved ones and friends, of our very life, the special blessings of the Mass and the sacraments so readily available in our archdiocese. Intentionally providing for persons with disabilities and allowing them to provide for others is not, then, a matter of “kindness” but of attention born of love. Our ministries that attend to the disabled are necessary so that the church can be herself. Pope Francis speaks and acts in order to include all those “on the margins” in the mission of the church. Recently he went to an island in the south of Italy, where boats filled with refugees from northern Africa occasionally capsize or, if the refugees get to shore, they find a poor welcome. What his actions and words bring out is the connection between population control and the refusal to welcome immigrants, who are not “our kind” of people. The same attitude can pervade policy toward the disabled. We are facing highly placed people shaped by a eugenics philosophy, one that not only says there are too many people in the world but, most of all, some of them are not the kind of people we want around, whether obviously disabled or just different. Anyone who wants some help in ministering to persons with disabilities can consult the index of departments on the archdiocesan website, scroll down to the Office for Persons with Disabilities (www.archchicago.org/departments/persons_disabilities/home_OPD.shtm) and click to open. I am proud of what we have done in the archdiocese to minister with and for people with disabilities. I am personally sensitive to this concern because I have struggled most of my life to keep walking, and I automatically mentally classify places according to how accessible they are. More recently, I’m aware of how chronic illness can sap one’s spirit. God is always present, but it’s also necessary that he be represented by his friends. In our archdiocese, God has many friends who befriend his disabled friends. Thank God.