Why seek the truth?
Truth is nothing less than the reality of things as they are and their meaning.
At the heart of it all lies life itself—not an abstract category, but the concrete life we live and that others live. To doubt the existence of truth (or to abandon the search for it) is not really to doubt life itself (how could we doubt life, the only reality we possess?), but to doubt its meaning: to doubt that life has meaning, and positive meaning—that it is a good, a value and not a disvalue, even with all its limits, with good mixed together with evil. But how do we come to know this?
Jean Vanier points to two paths: compassion and wisdom—the way of the heart and the way of rational intelligence.
The way of accepting ourselves and the other as we present ourselves—this is the way of intelligence united with compassion, with suffering—with ourselves and with the other.
To succeed in this search for truth is to live humanly the path of maturation that God proposes and offers to each of us as the meaning of our lives: a path that begins at birth and ends in the fulfillment of life.
Thus truth lies hidden within us and in our relationship with the other, in our weakness and our limits—as the Word chose to become flesh.
Here lies the "school" of L'Arca and Faith and Light.
G.B.
L'Arca and Faith and Light are schools of love and compassion. I grow ever more convinced that to be schools of love, they must be schools of truth: places where we can discern truth, proclaim it, and be living witnesses to it. In a world marked by rapid and constant change, a pluralist world unified by media and transportation, there is a risk of relativizing everything, of seeing reality only in terms of what it can bring us in pleasure, money, and so forth. There is a risk of doubting even that truth exists.
How can we rekindle a taste for truth? Does it not take a whole lifetime to overcome our illusions and our subjectivities and learn to love reality and marvel at it? So we often flee from reality because it disturbs us, because it highlights our gaps, our limits, and sometimes the evil within us. We try to reshape it to our liking to protect ourselves. Yet there is a human and philosophical truth just as there is a scientific truth.
Our world is so complex that sometimes it seems to be drifting. For this reason, it has an immense need for compassion and wisdom. Our communities need it, and each of us needs to discover the importance of truth. Our minds and our hearts must be unified so we can love intelligently, so we can help each person become more free. The heart is called to guide the mind, and vice versa.
An intelligence poorly or inadequately formed will misdirect the heart and separate from it. And a heart severed from intelligence will be guided only by subjective emotion.
If we do not develop our intelligence, we will have no certainties, no foundation for our actions, and no vision of what it means to be human. We risk being guided only by the values of our surroundings and by the emotions conveyed through media, according to current fashion. Truth structures us; it gives us the vision we need to live humanly in our societies. We can develop our intelligence and use our knowledge for our own glory, if we believe ourselves superior to others. But truth is not meant to shut us in on ourselves; its mission is to open us to reality and to others, so we can listen to them, understand them, serve them, welcome what they think and what they live. This allows us to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of life with a heart still capable of wonder.
We never possess truth; we allow ourselves to be possessed by it. Truth is not produced; it is sought, and we are called to welcome it as a gift.
This search for truth is essential to the life of our communities. I believe that "assistants" cannot commit themselves for the long term without this taste for truth.
David Ford, a professor of theology at Cambridge University, said to a group at L'Arca: "You have a spirituality in L'Arca, but for this spirituality to deepen, you must ground it in theology." Our communities cannot continue to live, to take root, or to find new paths in the years ahead unless we cultivate this taste, this search for truth, that helps us advance on the path God offers us.
To grow in this search, we need the help of men and women of thought: theologians, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others from outside our communities. With them, we can better discern the meaning of L'Arca and Faith and Light in today's world. Aware that we are part of God's design, we will better understand the direction to take. We will have light and a conception of life and the world.
We must seek out those who can help us allow ourselves to be possessed by truth, and through truth, understand the value and vision of L'Arca and Faith and Light. This vision matters for us, but also for society and for our Churches. Work in formation has already been done in many nations, but much remains to be done. I would like to highlight four areas we must deepen:
The integration of philosophy and the Word of God
I was fortunate to meet Father Thomas and to live near him. For me, he was not only a spiritual master who guided me to listen to the Holy Spirit and discover the path God willed for me, but also a master of philosophical and theological thought. It was he who advised me to write a thesis on Aristotle. I have never regretted that difficult work. Aristotle taught me to distinguish what is essential from what is accidental and secondary in all things. Aristotle, we are told, was passionate about all that is human and real; he wanted to welcome reality with humility and try to understand it. Aristotle opened my mind and taught me wonder in the face of truth. Truth does not help us only to act and succeed in our projects; it also invites contemplation. By contemplating the beauty, harmony, and intelligence inscribed in our beings and in the universe, we can walk toward contemplation of the source of this universe. The Gospel reveals to us that this source became human in Jesus:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being... And the Word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1).
Through revelation, we discover the Word: Jesus became small so he could become the friend of the small and announce the Good News. We must then discover the truth about the Word who now hides in the weak and in our own weakness.
John says in his Gospel that "he came to his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." Is this not the situation of people with disabilities who are not welcomed in our societies?
In L'Arca, as in Faith and Light, we are called to know both the truths that come from the earth and from our experiences, and those that come from Heaven and from God's Word: light comes from these two sources. This is why it is important to recognize and name our experience, to understand it better with the help of professionals, but also to deepen our knowledge of the mystery of the Word who became poor to enrich us.
Every person has value and is called to maturity
We live in a particular age. There is much oppression and chaos, but also greater recognition—at least in theory—of the value of every life. We discover more and more our belonging to a single human race, our shared humanity. At the same time, we do not acknowledge the fears and prejudices that exist within us. We quickly close ourselves off.
It is not easy to discern in our different cultures what feeds this turning inward and what helps our growth toward inner freedom, greater maturity, and the capacity to welcome and love each person.
I have come to understand that increasingly, in L'Arca and Faith and Light, we are called to live the parable of the wedding feast described in Matthew's Gospel. Today there is much talk of welcoming each person as they are. There is something beautiful in this attitude: respect for the other, a refusal to judge. This tolerance is a reaction against an exaggerated moralism that accused and condemned. It can, on the other hand, hide a rejection of truth: everything is good, everything is possible. No, not everything is good! Evil exists. There are wars, genocides, drugs, and the strong often oppress the weak. For money or power, much evil can be done.
It is important to distinguish morality from psychology. Morality is grounded in the intrinsic value of every human being, whatever his or her limits. To live this morality, we must know what it means to be human, how through the different stages of life we are called to grow toward freedom and inner unity. We must deepen our understanding of what freedom is, what conscience is, what maturity is. To become fully human, it is not enough that "assistants" reach this maturity; people with disabilities must reach it too. This is not a question of "normalization," but of "personalization." Helping each person to be themselves—the freest, most open, and happiest possible.
The bond between psychology and spirituality
We are called to understand how psychology differs from spirituality, and at the same time how our character, our psychology, and our humanity form the soil into which the Holy Spirit is planted. Psychology and spirituality do not oppose each other; they are called to complete each other in a vision of the human person that makes us aware of the place that should belong to the weakest in our Churches and in the world. This obliges us to look at our weakness in a new way. We discover that weakness opens for us a new path in the search for unity within ourselves, in our communities, between our communities, between our Churches, and in our societies.
Conclusion
Day after day, I am amazed by our communities and by the men and women who are their heart. They help me discover a new wisdom—the wisdom of the heart—and through it, the wisdom of God, which is essentially heartfelt.
Our communities are guiding me toward a new anthropology, a new way of reading God's Word (especially the Gospel of John), a new way of grasping the inequalities of the world, a new way of responding to conflict, and a new way of exercising authority.
I thank God that in 1950 he led me to meet Father Thomas, who guided me closely throughout. I thank God for inviting me, in 1964, to welcome Raphael and Philippe and to begin the adventure of L'Arca, and then Faith and Light. I give thanks for each one of you who will read this letter. Together, may we be called to continue the path, to struggle for life and love in our fractured world, to grow in truth, and to marvel at the treasure God entrusts to us.
Jean Vanier, 2000
(Fifth section of Jean Vanier's letter to the friends of L'Arca and Faith and Light)