I had imagined many things when Giulia asked me to join her on a trip to Trosly to meet Jean Vanier—I was even one of two coordinators of the Rome Fede e Luce community at San Roberto, so you can imagine the emotion—but I never, in a thousand years, expected that this man, of whom I had heard so much and whose books I had read, would end up being our driver. In the car, heading to Mass at a nearby parish, Giulia sat in front next to Jean at the wheel while I sat in back, savoring the sight of a saint behind the steering wheel, speaking about people with disabilities, God, and community with my closest friend.
We often picture saints wrapped in a mystical aura that almost lifts them off the ground. But that is not how it works. Holiness kneads heaven and earth together to make "all things new"—even the mundane, the ordinary, those gestures we perform a thousand times a day but which, in the hands of a saint like Jean, take on a different flavor, the fragrance of God.
"It is important not to do extraordinary things but very ordinary things with extraordinary love," he would say. This is not advertising copy. This is what I witnessed Jean Vanier doing with my own eyes during those late January days in 2012 that Giulia and I spent at Trosly-Breuil. As we watched and listened to what surrounded us in that small village in northern France, we saw the young people from our community and the hopes of their mothers. We thought about our own reality and what we still had to do.
At the center of everything was love—real love, God's love for the human being. Love that is both powerful and tender, and it took shape before our eyes in the most beautiful way possible. What we had read in Jean's books and heard him speak about at gatherings, we touched with our own hands there—like Thomas placing his finger in the wound of Jesus and finding there the source of his being, bursting forth in the most beautiful profession of faith: "My Lord and my God."
When Jean writes and repeats that every person is important, that each of us is a gift—all of us, no one left out, even those whom the "world" pushes to the margins of society, those with disabilities (and note: Jean never speaks of "the disabled" because disability does not define the person but always only of people with disabilities, people, that is)—when he insists that each person must be revealed as unique and precious in God's eyes, as a beloved child, well, we saw all of this at Trosly.
What we had read in Jean's books and heard him speak about at gatherings, we touched with our own hands. Like Thomas placing his finger in the wound of Jesus.
What we had read in Jean's books and heard him speak about at gatherings, we touched with our own hands. Like Thomas placing his finger in the wound of Jesus.We saw it in the workshops where young people work with clay or make jam, each one contributing what they can and in their own way, and in the fields where they grow fruits and vegetables—because at L'Arche, work restores to a person the dignity that the world strips away because of disability.
We saw it at the table, where everyone has a role—setting the table, clearing it, washing the dishes—and their own place. In the young people's rooms, each one personalized and never anonymous, because L'Arche is not an institution but a family home where every person is welcomed and loved for who they are, respected in their needs and their tastes.
We heard it in the foyer, where even people with the most severe disabilities have their day structured between time outside and time at home—because at L'Arche no one is left sitting idle, not even visitors like us, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to add one more place at the table, to sit beside strangers, to speak different languages (and I assure you that language is not a problem at Trosly: I who speak English poorly felt perfectly understood by everything around me, because spoken words are not everything).
And at the beginning and end of all things, that engine that drove Jean's life, we tasted it in the solemn fullness of the daily Mass—the beating heart of our days at Trosly, celebrated in a little church carved out of a stable (does that ring a bell?), decorated with a small stained-glass window given to Jean by the Taizé community.
Nicla Bettazzi, the mother of Massimiliano, once wrote that "Fede e Luce is not doing for but being with." I cannot find better words to describe Jean's way. He was present. He was with the young people when, tall as he was, we saw them at Trosly climbing all over him. He was with God when listening to Mass, his mind absorbed and recollected, transfigured, as if he were recharging the batteries of his spirit to carry that Word with him through every single hour of his days—in community and at great international gatherings—to keep doing ordinary things like washing dishes, driving, having tea and chatting, in a way that was entirely extraordinary. His way.