By: Jay Sorgi
“I have very little vision,” Barbara Lassen admits.
She may be visually-impaired, but she can hear, smell, taste and deeply touch God.
Lassen has felt the Lord’s presence throughout her life by touching and walking the cobblestones of the Holy Land, through the touch of a loving friend’s hand.
And through the walls filled with shelves of braille that her hands touch, reading and learning the history of how God has worked. She receives many of those texts for free from the Xavier Society for the Blind.
“We hear from clients all the time about how much they appreciate the materials they receive from us and how it literally has opened a new world in terms of the practice of their faith, how they learn about their faith”
Aisling Redican, the Xavier Society for the Blind’s communications and fundraising manager
“It’s at my fingertips,” says Lassen, who lives in Concord. “It opened a whole new world to me in terms of my, my faith and what can be accomplished.”
That’s just the tip of the iceberg regarding what she has received from the organization founded in 1900.
Admittedly, she might not have shelf space at her home for the braille version of the Bible.
“I don’t have the room. It’s big. It’s 45 volumes…14 linear feet.”
Before encountering the Xavier Society in the 1990s, she had already been reading braille – and creating it – for 30 years.
“I had a priest who said to me out of the blue, ‘I hear you can read in the dark.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can.’ He wanted me to do one of the readings at our Holy Saturday service,” Lassen said. “I did the reading of Exodus, and I brailled it all out on my own. And it was like 14 pages long, braille pages, one sided.”
Then she found the Xavier Society, based in New York, which has constantly provided a steady stream of text that she has requested over three decades, particularly for her lectoring. They create and distribute Catholic braille, large print and audio content at no cost to its patrons.
“I get the Mass proffers every month from Xavier in braille,” Lassen says. “I’ve been getting other braille material over this 30-year period, different things that I do like for scripture studies, because I have run scripture sharing groups also in my parish.”
Lassen’s journey mirrors the story of Margaret Coffey, a blind teacher of blind children and the founder of the Xavier Society.
“Her students were learning about the sacraments, preparing for the sacraments, but they didn’t have access to any materials,” says Aisling Redican, the Xavier Society for the Blind’s communications and fundraising manager.
“She was really frustrated about this. She had the fire and the idea and the want to make these materials available to her students. With $350 of her own money (approximately $13,000 today after inflation), she started Xavier Society for the Blind. She had the help of a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph Stadelman. He worked mainly with deaf adults, but she kind of roped him in and she said, ‘Let’s get this thing going.’ And 126 years later, we’re still here.”
The cost of creating and shipping braille materials goes far beyond what people without visual impairment would pay for items like the Bible. A New American Edition bible in paperback can cost less than $10.
The braille version of the entire Bible? Try close to $1,000.
That’s where the Xavier Society for the Blind comes in, meeting the cost of sharing the Catholic faith – simply through donations.
“We are so incredibly blessed to have some really generous individual donors. We have clients who support us as well,” said Redican.
“We don’t get any government assistance or anything from archdioceses, things like that. It’s mostly individual donors, small family foundations, requests.”
What the society receives in response is incredible gratitude for the impact it makes in bringing God’s touch into the lives of the blind and visually-impaired.
“We hear from clients all the time about how much they appreciate the materials they receive from us and how it literally has opened a new world in terms of the practice of their faith, how they learn about their faith,” Redican explains.
“For children who are able to follow along with their sighted classmates and then go on to make their First Communions and their Confirmations and things like that, the joy on their face when we get photos from their parents…they just can’t believe that this was available for their child.”
Lassen says her experience proves she can be God’s tool for sighted people.
“People will come up to me, and sometimes they think I’ve memorized readings, right? And I hold up the book and I say, ‘No, no, I’m reading braille,’” said Lassen, who aims to find more people in the East Bay whom the Xavier Society for the Blind aids in their faith life.
“They provide enrichment…they provide a whole other way to build my relationship with Jesus.”
To donate or receive services from the Xavier Society for the Blind:
xaviersocietyfortheblind.org
1-800-637-9193
info@xaviersocietyfortheblind.org