The story of a young man, who with the strength of the Gospel, transformed his pain into practical acts of love for the others.

I am twenty-six years old and an electronic engineering student. When I was eight, an illness, initially wrongly diagnosed as a tumor on the brain, left me with a damaged optic nerve and badly affected my eyesight. As a result I have often wondered about suffering and the reasons for it.

At eleven, I was advised by doctors that I would never be able to compete at the highest levels in sport. I could play sports, but only as a pastime. I began to play basketball, but because I lacked 3D vision I was not a good player and the others made fun of me. At school, when team members were picked, I was always the last to be chosen because no one wanted me on their side. Increasingly, I asked myself what life was about.

When eighteen, I got my driving license! It was a special one, renewable every two years, but it is hard to drive, because one has to foresee what other drivers are doing, and more than skill one needs good eyesight. I saw how easy it was for my friends to “get up and go,” while I was unable to do so. It was hard to take, and it still is.

There is something, however, that helps me believe that suffering has a purpose. When I think of Jesus who died on the cross, I tell him, “Jesus, you had many ways of saving us, why did you choose the cross?” Suffering must have a high priority, otherwise he could have done it another way!

I made the experience that the words of the Gospel, lived out in a radical way, are really true, “to whoever loves me, I will show myself… give and there will be gifts for you...” Those times when I was able to live them in a serious way, I touched with my own hands the truth of everything that Jesus promises. And I experienced an immense, quiet peace within that no one could take away from me. This inner peace, that comes as a matter of course in those moments, leads me to believe that Someone up there loves me and has a plan of love for me. And everyday problems have become an opportunity to exercise charity, patience, faith and other virtues.

After fifteen years, the device they put in my head wore out and stopped working. I knew that this would happen sooner or later, but the doctors took two weeks to discover that the valve was not working. In the meantime my field of vision deteriorated even more.

I calculated that if each time the drainage valve is blocked, my sight will worsen by a certain percentage, by the age of 45 I will need a guide dog… When I left the doctor’s after that terrible news, I tried to listen to what Jesus was telling me. But all I heard was a huge emptiness, a cosmic silence.

I went ahead, loving in the only moment I had, the present. My sense of justice was transferred into doing things for others. In the university there is an office that helps students who cannot follow the lessons and study for various reasons. They gave me a camera and a portable PC so that I could videotape the most difficult lessons, for which there are no suitable textbooks, or which require the guidance of a teacher to explain them properly.

This whole experience is like a gym where I can train day after day in patience and humility, but most of all it opens up a direct communication channel with those who suffer. The discovery of God who is Love gives me the strength and the joy to not close in on my own problems, but to turn my gaze outwards, towards my neighbors.

M. T. – Italy