His unshakable faith is framed on the bedroom walls. That painting of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, posted near the window, «strikes me because Saint John kneels before Jesus», explains Marialuisa “Mary” Sangalli through the ocular communicator. The crucifix, hanging next to the mirror, «helps me to pray and meditate that Jesus died and rose again; so I too, through the cross, am resurrected in my hours”, he adds, looking at the screen fixed in front of him on the wheelchair with which he moves around his home in Milan. She has been here since November 2009, when, at the age of 37, ALS forced her to abandon La Thuile, in Valle d’Aosta, where she lived.
There, after working in the summer as a waitress, she moved in 2003 and conceived, from her marriage to Matteo, her last two children, Luigi (21 years old) and Maria (19), followed by Giulia (25) and Pietro (23). And it is precisely to them that Mary dedicated the book What Surprises Me. Life written with eyes (Edizioni Ares), which also contains an introduction by Don Eugenio Nembrini, who was one of the first people to welcome her to the Lombard capital. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, my children,” he writes in the first part entitled Living, «I have in my heart the desire to tell you who I am and what has made my life beautiful because it is clear that my illness is very serious and I will not have the chance to see you become men and women, to keep you company in your adult life.”
Life notes
The book is the set of “life notes” that Mary began to write down in 2010 with the help of the ocular communicator in the bedroom where the past and the present coexist and come together in her smiling face, which has become a mosaic composed of the faces of her friends, given to her for her fiftieth birthday.
As time passed, Mary lost the use of her tongue, arms and legs, but continued to retrace the moments of her life, starting from her childhood that began in Mozzo, in the Bergamo area, in a family that neither prayed nor went to Mass. But that didn’t affect her belief that God existed, even though “one of my classmates at primary school told me he didn’t exist”, Mary recalls. «I was shocked but at the same time I was very sure that he was wrong».
Experience God
Encouraged by the people closest to her, Mary filled the blank pages of a document which – thanks to the help of two friends, Chiara and Riccardo – became a book in which she ranged from family pain due to eviction, the premature death of her father and foster care in another family, to the joy of graduating in Political Sciences at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, marriage and motherhood.
But, more than any other period of his existence, he witnessed how God transformed from a “feeling” to a “real presence” in his daily life conditioned by illness. «At the beginning there was only silence, but over the years I began to experience God, my heart spoke of Him and my intelligence understood more»explains Mary, “and without realizing it I had allowed him to enter into a relationship with me and I wrote what he made me experience.”
A viral prayer
Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, Mary recites the rosary, remotely, with around thirty people, including acquaintances and friends. They are connected from every part of Italy to pray for their own and others’ suffering. They met, for the first time, during the pandemic: at the beginning it was also a way to keep each other company; then, attendance increased and led to the creation of a group, Here I am, a viral prayer.
They share “the hardships”, as Mary defines them. It is also through living these community experiences that his invocations to God change in words and demands over time: «It is always a matter of entrusting myself and entrusting people or situations. It’s like saying: “You take care of it, take care of it, give me strength”. Because prayer is not unilateral, but is a relationship where the Father responds according to his wisdom.” In moments of discouragement, in which the illness seems to corner her and debase her life, through prayer Mary discovers that «the narrower the road, the more I feel the embrace of Christ, who shows the beauty and goodness of things». Looking at him allows her “not to drown in the events of life and to breathe with full lungs”.
