By Gretchen Keiser

Sometimes, when confronted with the difference of people who are developmentally disabled, the word used derogatorily to describe them is “slow.”

Toni Miralles, who directs a special religious education program at St. Jude’s parish in Sandy Springs for the developmentally disabled, has watched for over 15 years as children progressed through the program and their teachers worked one-on-one with them.

Right now a Confirmation class of six students is being readied for a June 22 ceremony at which Archbishop Thomas Donnellan will preside. Mrs. Miralles, who became involved in teaching special religious education in 1969 after searching for an appropriate class for her daughter, Felicia, directs the parish program, which actually serves about 30 students from about seven parishes.

In addition to sacramental preparation for the Eucharist and Confirmation, the St. Jude’s program provides ongoing religious education for those who are mentally retarded, those with severe learning disabilities and other disabled.

Out of the program for children and young adults has come an evening Bible study and sharing group for nine adults, as some of those who were the first participants in the children’s program grew to adulthood.

The teaching is an experience of deep commitment and intensity for all concerned. It brings together an unusual combination of teenaged teachers and disabled students. “I have about 25 teachers every year,” said Mrs. Miralles, who has a waiting list of people offering to teach in the special program. Some began as teachers when they were teens and are now young working professionals. Others are new recruits.

“I used to be amazed, but it seems like they just keep coming,” the director said. “I think they realize how much these students minister to them.”

Using “every little room available” in St. Jude’s School at the same time as the full parish school of religion, students and teachers meet one-on-one for 45 minutes on Sunday morning and each has an individual lesson depending upon the student’s needs and what he or she has already studied. A half-hour of music with all students and teachers singing, clapping and “celebrating” together ends each session.

The teachers, who keep a constant journal noting difficulties and successes and give that to Mrs. Miralles each week so that she can encourage and direct them, “may spend two months on one lesson,” perhaps teaching about God as a friend and talking about the ways in which friends help and support one another.

But, most important, the teachers live out their faith for the students. “You can’t teach (the students) about a God they haven’t seen until they’ve really experienced love and friendship,” Mrs. Miralles said.

In addition to the students who are in the St. Jude’s program, others are prepared for the sacraments in their own parishes and are part of the annual parish First Communion or Confirmation ceremony. Every two or three years a special class, such as this year’s Confirmation class at St. Jude’s, receives the sacrament as a body. The last time such a special celebration was held at St. Jude’s was about 10 years ago, Mrs. Miralles said, but one was held at Corpus Christi parish in Stone Mountain several years ago.

The preparation material for Confirmation comes from the Diocese of Topeka, Kansas and is simplified and emphasized the central themes of the sacrament, Mrs. Miralles said. Teachers “talk a lot about family and community. They are teaching the spirit of it, rather than all the particulars.”

While the developmentally disabled “cannot learn everything that other kids do, there is a lot they can learn,” Mrs. Miralles said. “It’s important that they be prepared to the best of their ability.”

Attitudes toward the disabled run the gamut, Mrs. Miralles said, from parents and teachers and priests who believe “you can’t teach them anything: to those who “think they’re saints.”

Searching for a middle road, “where we do accept each person as a person,” the director believes in the appropriateness of sacramental preparation and teaching, but also in the need to search for “signs or readiness” for the sacraments.

“We all have a different ability to be willing to receive the Eucharist,” she observed. “There has to be a growing awareness you reach, a point in your instruction when you know it’s time.”

In addition to the observations of the parents and teachers, Mrs. Miralles says she requires “a child to be close to the normal age for the sacrament and to be in a program for at least a year.” All the more so with disabled, she says, it is necessary for parents to be committed to the ongoing spiritual development of the child. Once a month instead of class they have a special liturgy with “adapted readings, homilies geared to them, songs they are familiar with,” she says, and families are invited to that liturgy.

Some special Masses are held in the small convent chapel, but others are celebrated in St. Jude’s Church and the parish community takes part. “I feel it is good for the parish to be involved and to see the gifts of our people,” the director said.

Parishioner Malika Ambrosetti, who plays the guitar for the music sessions and has been involved with the program for nine years as a musician and teacher says that she has been changed by her closeness to the disabled.

“The most important thing is what they teach us, not what we teach them,” said Mrs. Ambrosetti. “We are so complicated. They are so neat and so simple.”

“They are very gifted in the area of simplicity,” she added. “My life changed because they don’t let me be so busy and so full of complications.”

Her own three teenagers love to come to the special liturgies with the handicapped, she said, because the freedom to clap and sing and speak helps them to see “that for God everything is okay” even if it is not letter-perfect.

Right now she has experienced an answer to prayer, having a special student join her in the music ministry. Kristen Rausch is “my dream come true,” Mrs. Ambrosetti said. “In the music aspect” the teenage girl is extraordinarily gifted, able to play guitar by ear and read chords. “She has an extraordinary ear, a fantastic beat,” Mrs. Ambrosetti said. “I don’t see any handicap in that area and that was a very touching experience for me – that you could be handicapped in one area and so gifted in another.”

“It gives a chance and a possibility and even a hope for others if she can do it.”

Toni Miralles says that working with the disabled has given her the gift of deeper sensitivity to and respect for the uniqueness of each person, whether disabled physically or not. She also notes the genuineness of her students and lack of guile.

Some of the special students “can be really bad, some take a lot of disciplines, but they are real,” she emphasized. “There are no games.”

“They might ask you why your nose is so big,” she said with a laugh, “but you know they are not smiling at you and thinking something else. “There’s an honesty.”

Working with disabled people deepens her awareness that God calls “each of us to be who we are and to rejoice in our uniqueness even when disability is a part of it.”