L'Arche and Faith and Light were founded in response to suffering—to answer the suffering of people with handicaps: their physical pain, their sense of failure or rejection, their struggle to make themselves understood and to comprehend what is said to them. They were founded to answer the suffering of parents who sometimes feel guilty before society for having "a child like that," who feel alone, misunderstood, and who live in shame and sometimes in grave difficulty with their child. Some parents live a real hell, without any support, without friends, in tiny apartments with their severely disturbed child. I am shaken by such suffering.
And then there is all the suffering I see around me. Suffering has always existed, of course, but today I am more aware of it: accidents, the death of loved ones, suicides, relationships that break apart, divorce, unemployment, the contempt and rejection of immigrants, the refusal to welcome fragile people who struggle to manage on their own in society.
Then there is all the suffering of wars, refugee camps, natural disasters. How do we stand before such enormous human suffering? By fleeing? By pretending it does not exist? By sinking into depression? By feeling guilty for the pain of others? By throwing ourselves frenetically into action, believing we must respond to all human suffering and trying to be the savior until we collapse?
Each of us must face human suffering: both what we see in the world and what is buried in our own hearts. This is very difficult, because we live in an age that tries to pretend suffering does not exist; we seek comfort, pleasure, and success at any cost; we avoid what is hard, especially in relationships. Yet despite advanced technology and all the medicines at our disposal, suffering remains.
If L'Arche and Faith and Light offer a small answer to some people who suffer, we know that we cannot answer all their suffering, much less all the suffering that exists. Parents are marked and wounded by what they have lived through. People with handicaps will never be healed.
Certainly, through our communities, some people come to accept themselves more, to have friends, to find meaning in life and even a genuine joy in living. But many remain in suffering.
We are drawn to people who have reached maturity of heart, who communicate with relative ease. But we must confess that all of us struggle before people who remain anxious and cry out their suffering. Is this not part of our calling? When you can ease someone's pain, you feel you have done something. But when you understand you can do nothing, everything becomes difficult.
There are unbearable physical sufferings that, with medical progress, can sometimes be eased. Psychological suffering is more complex to treat: anguish, the feeling of guilt for existing, fear of others, confusion, insecurity, loss of self-trust, a taste for death.
There are sedatives, but they often leave people in a state of numbness. If medicines are necessary, an important response to suffering is the presence of someone who reveals to the suffering person that they are not bad, that they are not alone, that someone is their friend and is simply there with them.
Friendship helps communicate life, helps draw the person out of depression and darkness, restores their taste for living. But friendship must be tested. It takes time to build trust and to believe in the faithfulness of a friendship.
In the face of someone with a severe toothache, it is not enough to simply tell them you are with them and that you love them; you must bring them to a good dentist. In the same way, before a person who is hungry, you must give them the nourishment they need or the means to obtain it with dignity. There is a form of compassion: to fight with all our strength, all our intelligence, and all our skill against human suffering. Yet before certain suffering, there is nothing to be done. When a mother has just lost her son, what she needs is a friend who stands beside her. That is compassion in the strong sense of the word—"being with." Is this not the heart of L'Arche and Faith and Light?
How do we stand beside the person who suffers? In certain ways, L'Arche and Faith and Light are almost like palliative care.
My sister Teresa was for some time a doctor in a large palliative care center at St. Christopher's Hospice in London. She introduced me to this field and taught me much. The patient in terminal care needs medical expertise, maximum comfort; they need to be free from machines and tubes; they need someone who can answer their questions, a friend who loves them and helps them live until the end. We are called to live both of these aspects: expertise and friendship.
It is difficult to live in covenant with an anxious person, especially if they refuse their weakness, if they are angry with life, with others, with God. To live a faithful friendship with them, we need a new strength. It requires a maturity of heart and spirit that comes from having accepted our own inner suffering, our own anxieties and failures. This takes time. We need the help of a good guide and competent professionals to do deep work on ourselves. We need good human and spiritual formation. The conditions of life in community must be livable over the long term, without excessive stress or exhaustion. We need that strength given to us by the Holy Spirit. When we feel loved and chosen by God, despite all our weakness, our relational difficulties, our inner wounds, and even our sins, we can stand beside people who live in anguish and confusion. I am not ignoring the importance of L'Arche and Faith and Light celebrations, or the joy of communion among us; I do not wish to be a victim. My experience of thirty-four years in L'Arche shows me that to continue working for unity, we must know how to stand before suffering and carry it with love.
We must discover compassion. Jesus places compassion at the summit of the new life he came to bring: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:36).
Compassion is walking with those who suffer, trying to understand them, to ease their pain, but above all to love them and to stand with them as Mary stood with Jesus, beside the cross (John 19). She did not flee, as the apostles did. In her was such a strength of love that it enabled her to stay when all the others had gone.
I still feel far from this form of compassion. I still have such fears and anxieties that it is sometimes difficult for me to stay calmly beside those who suffer, without agitation.
The covenant we proclaim at L'Arche and Faith and Light is sweet and at the same time painful: it is an entire journey toward entering into communion with God. It requires that our hearts be formed, strengthened, and fortified to "stand" beside those who suffer. God wants to give us these hearts of compassion, gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that we can be beside those who suffer, in love and in hope of the resurrection.
Only if we have hearts of compassion can we be instruments of peace, working for unity in our communities and among our communities, but also between L'Arche and Faith and Light, among our different Churches, and among all the men and women on earth, whatever their religion. So often unity is broken because we fear the suffering caused by difference. Compassion, like forgiveness, is a source of unity. It requires true wisdom.
This leads me to speak of formation.
To be continued in the next issue
- Jean Vanier, 2000