St. Therese's Vision for
Disability Giftedness

We are a community for those of us with disabilities and mental health challenges and we join with people who support us.  We have created this site as a resource webpage also.

Our Vision of this Mission:

We envision a Church where all people with disabilities and mental health challenges will be brought into an environment where they can more readily respond to the saving love of Jesus Christ and see themselves as beloved children of God. Today, tragically, we often encounter people with disabilities who feel alienated from God and segregated from Christian community. This directly contrasts Christ’s example. Throughout the gospel Jesus continued to reach out His healing touch to people with disabilities as signs of God’s Kingdom. He revealed their dignity by showing that they were His priority of love and integral in His preparation for the birth of the Church. Each person has a broken place that Christ wants to touch. It is notable that today in the Church there are many individuals of high intellect, and yet their social disabilities are not being served or empowered in their communities and there are few missions meant specifically for them (such as L’Arche, which was created for more serious developmental disabilities). Similarly, mental health challenges need to be much more seriously addressed.

We envision a Church that focuses on the whole person, accepts each with love, and seeks to educate. As such, our Vision for people with disabilities and mental health challenges not only includes, helps, and offers support for these in daily life but also strives to empower their gifting from God so that in turn they can use their gifts to bring the gospel to our broken world.

All of this, we hope, will help to equip each person in the Church in their mission, both within their Church community and to the world, helping all to be transformed by the Holy Spirit by coming into a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and discovering His personal mission for each and every one of us.

Who is our mission for?

Our mission is to educate everyone in the Church on disabilities. We hope one day to see the whole world transformed in Christ through Our Lady’s “yes”, her “fiat”, to the calling of the Father. To succeed in this mission we have structured our organization by certain defining characteristics; however, we wish to state, regardless of any specific challenges mentioned or not mentioned in this mission statement, no one with any gift or challenge can be excluded from this call.