We know well that from heaven he smiles at these words, yet it remains undeniably true that Jean Vanier held such significance in the Christian community and in the world that he would have deserved far more than a Nobel Peace Prize. And this, despite the fact that Italy's major newspapers did not even report his death.
Those who knew him recognize that they encountered a saint—someone whose life has touched the lives of those who will one day see him canonized. Saints exist today, and the Gospel remains so alive that it still reveals itself in wonders and signs. Those who received his testimony know he was, all at once, a lay figure who decisively transformed how we see life across nations and continents. His humility made it hard to grasp the role he played in human history, but that hardly means he did not play it. God grants the "little ones" a power to shape history far more effective and lasting than any wielded by the mighty. Jean was at home on every continent, awaited and blessed wherever he went.
We must speak of a true "vocation" from God, which he nurtured over years and which led him in 1964 to make his final choice. The span of that commitment—fifty-five years, from then until his death—testifies to the absolute character of his calling. His freedom is evident too in his conscious acceptance that Faith and Light would flourish alongside the Ark. What a contrast to founders of other groups and communities who cling to power over their creations, while Jean brought these into being knowing they would bear fruit in others' hands, with no need for him to control their outcomes or claim credit for them.
This willingness to be a seed cast abroad, not held in his own hands, meant that Jean's voice and witness took root in countless forms across the earth. What mattered was never Jean himself, or the Ark, or Faith and Light. What was decisive was that he pointed to the encounter with people with disabilities as bearers of a gift. It was rare to hear him suggest that someone should join the Ark or Faith and Light, or even indirectly publicize them. Instead, he spoke of life itself—only life—of his friends who were weak and of how they carried a gift that anyone, in whatever condition, could receive by receiving them.
What a contrast to founders of other groups and communities who cling to power over their creations. Jean brought these into being knowing they would bear fruit in others' hands.
What a contrast to founders of other groups and communities who cling to power over their creations. Jean brought these into being knowing they would bear fruit in others' hands.
This is why he came to Rome so often—as a guest of parish communities, but also to lead spiritual retreats for anyone who wished to share with him the gift of listening to the Lord. He came, for instance, to Santa Chiara in 1993, then to Santa Melania. I remember the spiritual exercises he preached at Rocca di Papa in 1994 to many who gathered for a week of prayer and discernment of their vocations with him.
Jean Vanier belonged to all people. He was Catholic in the deepest sense of the word. He was of the "little ones," but as their messenger he went wherever he was called to speak of them. Even the biblical names he chose for the Ark and for Faith and Light reveal his desire to be a messenger of Jesus and of Jesus's friends, rooted in a Christian faith that was always light to him because it was lived faith.
Jean Vanier did not merely believe in Jesus. He loved Jesus. He loved him. And charity is greater than faith. Jean loved Jesus and proclaimed him throughout the world. And precisely out of love for Jesus, he loved the individual faces of his "little ones" whom he encountered, never turning what he lived, witnessed, and proclaimed into ideology or partisan messaging. Jean was concerned above all to show, to present, to offer—so that each person could see what they had never yet seen.
This approach is evident in how he lived and spoke of his deep sorrow at seeing, in wealthy countries of Northern Europe, the growing practice of prenatal screening for disability, while publicly affirming the dignity of people with disabilities—even as newborns with Down syndrome have virtually disappeared in Iceland and Denmark. He spoke of this without shouting, without raising his voice, but even in a whisper making clear that this was neither good nor just, because his words were spoken as love.
Jean Vanier made a rich contribution, too, toward recognizing the sacramental reality through the lens of the "little ones." Precisely where rational understanding may be weak or words may be unavailable, the sacramental sign becomes even more vital—sometimes the only language that can be perceived. The Eucharist, in the sign of bread, becomes all the more central when a discussion or debate makes no sense or is impossible. More than this: Jean Vanier made clear an ecumenism rooted in the "little ones," one that presses toward every possibility of intercommunion, so that a person with a disability baptized in the Orthodox tradition might celebrate the same Eucharist with his or her Catholic siblings, and vice versa.
As a priest of Rome—which loved him and was treated by him with such affection—this seemed to me a distinctive witness to offer, set beside the many crucial dimensions of his life that are explored in this issue of Ombre e Luci: his universality, his catholicity.