[Note from Rowland: We have a little four-year old grand-daughter who is ‘developmentally delayed’. I told her physiotherapist yesterday I get more smiles from little Bella than from all our four children and six grandchildren combined!].

Jean Vanier, Our Life Together: A Memoir in Letters (564 pages, 2007)

Here’s an inspiring ‘must read’ for admirers of Jean Vanier, who has taught the modern world more about seeing Jesus in ‘little people’ who are mentally and physically handicapped than anyone else. This brilliant man (with a PhD on Aristotle) left a life of privilege (his father a Governor-General of Canada, and Jean taught at the University of Toronto) to wash dishes and house and feed and bathe the most neglected and hidden people in any community. He and his ‘assistants’ have established 131 ‘L’Arche (‘the Ark’) communities for the psychologically and physically wounded in 31 countries.

There are many aspects to Jean Vanier’s greatness. Shining through these letters is an inspiring love, peace, humility, integrity and passion for justice. He’s a gentle man but doesn’t bother ‘living beneath the radar’ (as in his criticisms of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, for example).

Jean was a close friend of Pope John Paul II, but he moved over time from the fairly exclusive Catholicism of his mentor Pere Thomas to become more ecumenical. In these letters, many written during his annual retreats and on planes, we meet his friends and heroes: Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Charles de Foucauld, the Little Sisters and Brothers of Jesus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Etty Hillesum, Dom Helder Camara, Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Brother Roger of Taize, Archbishop Rowan Williams… And countless little people – Catholics, the Good Samaritan, Pentecostals, Buddhists, whoever – who dangerously practise selfless love to serve the helpless, the poor and the oppressed. (He mentions communities in India where Christians, Hindus and Moslems meet together every morning and evening for prayer: where’s the nearest meeting like this to where you live?). His devotional theology is simple and conservative biblically, but his intellectual tastes are broad (he tells of reading a remarkable book, The Company of Strangers by Parker Palmer… We can all benefit greatly from a careful reading of this book).

The stories are moving. He visits a psychiatric hospital in Manila with 5000 people: ‘Some faces we saw there still haunt me: young faces behind bars imploring, “Please tell my father I want to come home”.’ Then a maximum security prison, with 3000 prisoners ‘transformed from a place of violence… to a place of peace and freedom… We met one prisoner shaving a guard with a sharp razor! And we were the only ones amazed by that!’ And stories of his special L’Arche friends: like Katim, who ‘before going to bed at night goes around the table and kisses each one. He truly feels at home.’

His life-texts? Many, mainly of course from the prophets and from Jesus. Especially this: ‘Whatever you do the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me’ (Matthew 25:40). Interestingly, Jean Vanier has a special love for the Gospel of John (his talks on the Fourth Gospel can be tracked down via Google).

Finally, his comments as he turns 60 (in 1988): ‘I feel well… so I ask Jesus to help me grow old as he wants. I also want to learn how to disappear, to trust others more, to live with less power and more trust in the grace of Jesus and in the poor, and more centred in prayer. I have a deeper desire to do the will of the Father, to be a friend and servant of Jesus and to let him penetrate more and more into my whole being. Often my prayer has been just that, inviting Jesus to come with his light and his love into the darkest and most hidden corners of my being.’

I’ll write another article with quotes which ‘gave me pause’. I suggest that you might slowly read a letter a day (it will take just a few months).

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher http://jmm.org.au/

March 2009