I want to share with you what I have learned living alongside handicapped people. It has given me an entirely new vision of the world and, I believe, helped me discover what is truly "new" in the Gospel.
Fourteen years spent in their company, and the cultures of the different countries where L'Arche communities have taken root, have deepened my understanding of the mystery of the human person and of creation itself.
When I speak of the suffering of handicapped people, I do not wish to talk only of the mentally handicapped. I want to speak as well of all those who feel excluded, who cannot find their place in the movement of society, who feel alone, who have no friends, and who for this reason feel profoundly discouraged.
Discovering the sadness and loneliness in the hearts of the mentally handicapped, I began to understand what Jesus Christ was asking of me and of our communities.
We have 47 communities scattered across the world. We are all lay people; we do not belong to a religious order. Most of us are Christians, but in our community in India there are now Hindus and Muslims, and in our communities in England, Scotland, and the United States, we work closely with our Protestant brothers and sisters.
Our calling, our vocation, is to create communities of reconciliation where the marginalized person may find a family, and in finding a family, may rediscover their reason for being, their deepest self.
The pain of all rejected and marginalized people is that they have lost faith in their capacity to love. They believe themselves worthless. They feel only their own frustrations, their own violence, their own despair.
The field of education is strewn with lies. There are people who say "I love you," but the moment they encounter a small difficulty, they turn away. A child cannot open their heart, cannot place their trust in someone, unless they know with certainty why that person is there beside them.
Too many people in social work occupy themselves with others, but not for the sake of others. They do it for themselves.
When you love, you become vulnerable. And vulnerability brings the risk of suffering—because to love someone is to open your heart and show them your weakness.
To love someone means: "I trust you, and so I reveal my secrets to you, because I trust you."
Love is the meeting of two weaknesses. And when you love, there is always the danger of being rejected. The greatest suffering is precisely this: to feel rejected, cast out, because "I am not good, because I am sick, because I am the way I am."
There is no greater suffering than a child abandoned by his mother, a mother abandoned by her son, a man abandoned by his wife, a woman abandoned by her husband. Because when you are abandoned, you stand utterly alone—alone with your misery, your darkness, your anger, your frustration. And at that moment you fall into anguish and despair.
Anguish is the deepest suffering a human being can endure. It is far greater than any physical pain. Each of us can bear physical suffering if we are loved. But anguish is to stand before our own spiritual death—to feel incapable of anything, to be someone no one can love, to be a stranger in your own world.
Every discouraged person waits for someone to say: "I trust in you. I believe you can do beautiful things with your life."
Very often in a handicapped person there is the feeling that they can do nothing.
I sometimes find twenty-five-year-old men whose mothers still wash them, even though they are in fact capable of washing themselves. Often, teaching a young person to wash himself takes far more time than washing him ourselves.
To teach someone to do something alone requires much more time than doing it yourself.
So there is always a great temptation for parents and educators not to let the handicapped person do things alone. On one hand, it troubles us; on the other, it takes much more time, and above all, much more patience.
But it is wonderful to discover that you can do small services, that you are capable of doing beautiful things. And when someone discovers they can do beautiful things, they want to learn to do more. The more they learn, the more they want to learn. The more they trust themselves, the more they find peace within.
What strikes me always about handicapped people is that when they find a little peace in their heart, they develop an extraordinary capacity to love. It is remarkable, by contrast, to see how the world contains people with very high intelligence quotients but very low heart quotients.
And I have discovered that those with very low intelligence quotients often have a very high heart quotient—a tremendous capacity to love.
I have also discovered that the handicapped person is a being of faith, of hope, of love—precisely because they cannot foresee for themselves, because they lack the intelligence to manage alone. They find security only in believing in adults. They are people who believe in others.
Handicapped people cannot live except in a situation where they are protected. They cannot find autonomy on their own. They need to live with others.
So if they lack the capacity to reason, they possess what binds them to other people—what makes them women and men of peace and love. What strikes me always is that because they are naturally people of faith, of hope, of love, they understand the Gospel very quickly.
"Brothers, consider your calling. Not many of you are wise by human standards, not many are powerful, not many are of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are." (St. Paul to the Corinthians)Our world has become a world in which each person struggles for themselves. We are quick to look at those who have more than we do, envying them. We rarely look at those who have less, to share with them. Through our education, we often encourage efficiency and power while forgetting that the most important reality is the capacity to love, to build community with one another, to restore hope through our love. The world is not saved by hatred, by struggle, by violence. It is saved only if there are men and women who know how to love. It is too easy to struggle for structures while forgetting the people. The world does not change by preserving structures if we do not know what a human person is, if we are not ready to meet the human person in their poverty and their suffering. If you truly have faith, trust in the person, you have a presentiment of the eternal value of the person—even the smallest, the poorest, the most different from us. I am personally convinced that a society that begins to look at the handicapped person, that truly begins to listen, that truly begins to build community with them, to discover the mystery of human tenderness, will gradually discover the mystery of love. For Jesus Christ is hidden behind the face of the poor.
"Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me."In discovering the mystery of the little one, we discover the mystery of God. We will find the key to the salvation of the world. We will discover the fundamental mystery of the Church of Christ. To the extent that we push the poor aside, to the extent that we refuse to listen to them, to the extent that we refuse to come down to their level, we remain in a world of theory and disappointment. For I am convinced that salvation comes from the heart of the poor, and from God hidden in that heart. Because our God is a crucified God. It is through the crucified person that salvation is found, and finally, Resurrection. Jean Vanier, 1978
(From an address by Jean Vanier at the Parma Conference, March 1, 1978)