For many years Jean Vanier has lived daily alongside people wounded in body and mind. We often encounter them too, but we flee their suffering as we flee our own. Jean Vanier invites us to answer with communion and love the cry of those who suffer. Here is his "invitation," drawn from a lecture he gave in Paris last year.
The first time I met men and women with handicaps, I was struck by their questions. The first was very simple: "Do you love me? Will you be my friend?" The second was unspoken, but written on their faces: "Why am I like this? Why?"
In the Bible, in the pages of the prophet Hosea, God speaks of an unfaithful woman fallen into suffering and despair: "I will seduce her, lead her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart. I will restore her vineyards." And he adds: "I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope." (Hosea 2:16–18).
The Hebrew people never entered that gorge near Jericho; they avoided it because it was a dangerous place. Yet God says: "If you dare to enter, you will discover that it is a door of hope."
We avoid certain things in our lives. We refuse to look at them and skirt around what makes us uncomfortable. What we avoid most is suffering. We build ourselves a world of dreams and plans where we feel secure, where we see ourselves as the best.
Facing suffering, there are only two responses: flight, which allows us to live more or less in a world of illusions, or closeness, which lets us discover compassion and the true God—the God of tenderness.
First, there is unbearable suffering. Look around us in the subway and on the streets—faces tense, angry, twisted by alcohol and drugs. Look in the prisons: a whole world of people who are wounded and who wound others. Look at the immigrants, the unemployed, the exploited in certain city neighborhoods. And the unbearable suffering of the rich, who lock themselves in their wealth and fear touching their own poverty. Perhaps the most unbearable suffering is feeling excluded, rejected, devalued, abandoned, alone—having no space. More and more people search for genuine welcome, for real love, but find no place to express it. What do we do before these aggressive, depressed, perpetually defensive men and women?
Those gripped by this world of hardness feel compelled to build armor around themselves, a shield to protect them. With this hardness we risk "killing" ourselves and locking love away inside us. The oppressed are not always in prisons; sometimes they live in our own hearts. We close ourselves into our ideology and judge others from within it. The other must be as we want them to be, and if they are not, we reject them. But in doing so we live outside reality, because we do not listen. We shut ourselves away or distract ourselves so as not to see the unbearable suffering around us, not to touch our own powerlessness. We flee, we deceive ourselves to forget, and we refuse to accept our poverty.
Suffering can imprison us in a closed world, but it can also bring forth new life
Suffering can imprison us in a closed world, but it can also bring forth new lifeWithin this somewhat swift and not very cheerful vision there are many beautiful things. I see them among the women and men of L'Arche. They have suffered greatly, yet what flowers emerge from the ruins! In all these broken lives there is participation, tenderness, a heart that waits. In this wounded world, how many gestures of gentleness! In this world of suffering, there rises—choked or violent—a cry that seeks love.
There are sufferings or crises that awaken hearts and lead us to accept reality. In Chinese, the word "crisis" means both "opportunity" and "danger." This fracture, this unbearable suffering, becomes a place of renewal, of encounter. The abominable sickness becomes sickness that saves, that shows a different path. Jesus, in the fifteenth chapter of John, speaks of branches that must bear much fruit. For this they must be pruned. The things that wound and demoralize us are pruning shears. Suffering can imprison us in a closed world, but it can also bring forth new life and awaken us to a new reality.
I want to say one more thing about returning "to the human," because our society wants to make us lose it. To reclaim our humanity means removing the protective barriers we have raised around our hearts in a world so difficult that we fear to love. These defense mechanisms, in the artificial world we inhabit, have broken the elements of our human environment: community, family, parish.
To reclaim our humanity, to become human again. To return to the heart of the human heart through our poverty; not to deny our wounds, not to fall into "suffering-worship" either, but to discover in love the possibility of healing.
In this world of suffering, there rises—choked or violent—a cry that seeks love
In this world of suffering, there rises—choked or violent—a cry that seeks loveTo reclaim our common humanity is also to reclaim our earth, which is beautiful. To discover that in all our being we are part of something far greater than ourselves. How beautiful it is! The universe is our garden. We belong to the earth. It is our home. To love the earth is to love the environment that gives us life. To love our body, to discover what it is. To reclaim the unity between heart and mind that is essential to being human. To discover that the body is born from woman and that woman, to carry the child, needs her husband. And that, to give birth, their love is as important as their physical union. To reclaim the importance of family, the meaning of community, of work.
To reclaim the sense of time. We cannot live the present moment. We weep over the past, we worry about the future, and we no longer live in the present. We must live in the present, because that is where truth is found, where God is found. Not try to change people, society, the world, but love those who stand near us so we can reclaim the meaning of every human being and build community. To stand together bound by a covenant. To live in this covenant and in this communion instead of living alone, in fear, in isolation, in competition and rivalry.
God does not ask us to be heroes, but to be human, tender, and loving. To discover the true meaning of compassion. This word holds two realities: one is "compassion-competence." If someone has a toothache it is not enough to hold his hand and say, "I love you"; we must take him to the dentist. The other is "compassion-compassion." When a mother loses her child, competence is useless. We must be there with her. There is much competence on earth, but if this political and social competence is not rooted in "compassion-compassion," it will often be used for our own glory, for power, for ideology—not for service and for the good of people.
In a community full of compassion we do not immediately try to change the world; we love each person as they are and see what we can do together. We become fruitful with the fruitfulness of love. This love is competent as well.
And finally, discover that the Word became flesh not to explain suffering, not to suppress it, but to dwell in it. Suffering becomes a sacrament. Perhaps the great mystery of being human was revealed to us when the Word became flesh—weak, small. God's presence shows us something new in relation to our earth, our body, our family, our humanity.
Jesus wants us to strive with all our strength to eliminate suffering with "compassion-compassion," but at the same time he shows us that suffering can become an offering, a call to love. If we have faith and trust it can become a sacrament, the place where we meet God, the place of true compassion.
- Jean Vanier, 1992
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