Margaret O’Donnell, Victoria, BC

Jean Vanier, who died the poorest of the poor, was teacher, shepherd, brother and friend. He passed away two years ago, May 7, 2019, at age 90. ‘Thank you’ God for the gift You gave.

TEACHER

It was Quebec City in 1972, in a church hall basement in the city’s poorest quarter, at a coffee break, where everyone was talking with the other, a kind of ‘joyous buzz’ and I had just arrived. “Which one is Jean Vanier?” eventually I asked, and was brought to the window, to witness two people engaged in earnest conversation, walking, across the street, one a towering gentleman bent like a willow tree toward a tiny women, called in those days a ‘bag lady’, both engaged in a rich encounter with one another. “That is Jean Vanier” I was told.

Jean Vanier’s presence was a teaching about the word ‘encounter’. Within him was the gift of real presence, a way of being entirely undistracted before the person in which he is in front. His way of being in the world taught me about listening and about the importance of the present moment.

It was in Western Canada, in 1973, Naramata BC, when I heard Jean Vanier speak about Jesus. I realized he was His disciple. The intimate communion between Jean and Jesus attracted me and I entered into a relationship with them both, and they with me, and introduced me to the poor.

Jean taught me that the first step in the encounter with the poor is ‘becoming trusted.’ “Veux-tu une cigarette?” (”You want a smoke?”) is a less intrusive way to start with someone who despises himself. Jean promise has proved true. When you become trusted by a person who is poor, that bond is irrevocable.

The poor link us to Gospel in a tangible, incarnational way. Jean Vanier taught us to welcome our ‘poverty’ as a gift and to believe that Jesus was identified less with our talents and our gifts, and fully with our weakness and our brokenness. He invited us to get to know Jesus in our wounds. He taught us about brokenness. He showed us that the path to freedom was through embracing the broken and the wounded, inside ourselves, our churches, society and humanity.

SHEPHERD

In an early Retreat, Jean Vanier talked about how each of us is called to be ‘shepherd’. ‘No matter who we are, no matter our status or our lot, we are each entrusted a ‘people’ for whom we are called to care for, to nurture, and to help to grow.’

He adamantly opposed a certain notion of ‘spiritual guide’ or ‘spiritual director’, that is, the concept of one person taking to himself/herself spiritual authority over another. Rather, he espoused the notion of ‘accompaniment’ – the coming alongside a person, walking with him, journeying with her.

As we journeyed together in L’Arche, we came before the mystery that within each of us is a ‘point of growth’ (‘a place that wants, that needs to grow, to change’). We came before the insight that each person contains with them a ‘secret’ (a place that remains unrevealed but which we detect and protect in the other). That secret place that is a person’s source from which they grow and change.

We discovered the notion of the NEW, (that growth leads to letting go and seeing and being in the world in new ways). The role of the shepherd – the one who accompanies – is to recognize the point of growth, to detect authentic sources of growth, and to confirm the other in his/her evolution to the entirely NEW. It always seemed to me that was Jean Vanier’s way to talk about the Resurrection.

For a decade of years, anyway, we were called to create ‘Accompaniment Retreats’, time set apart to discover together the passages that lead to growth, and how to be present to people as they make these passages.

Eventually, an elaborate system would be created to include different types of accompaniment, – personal, functional, spiritual, and community. Training included ‘spiritual accompaniment’ (support to detect if one belonged or not in the situation), ‘functional accompaniment’ (support to live one’s role in community), ‘spiritual accompaniment’ – (support to live one’s vocation in community – as a married, celibate, single person), ‘community accompaniment’ – (support to live relationships in one’s home and community).

• “It’s not the other person who needs to change. It’s ME that needs to change. Rudimentary.”
• “The most important person in one’s family, the community is one’s enemy – that person that blocks my creativity, that jumps on me before I speak …. that awakens my fury.” Impossible without prayer and good accompaniment.
• “The poor have the power to transform us.”
• “Change the world, one heart at a time.”
• “Jesus is the Master of the Impossible. If you are setting out on a project, and you think you can accomplish it, it is probably not from the Spirit.”

BROTHER

In Spring, 1972, Tony Walsh introduced me to the Little Sisters of Jesus in Montreal who organized my stay with them. There, I first learned of Brother Charles de Foucauld, source of inspiration for their Foundation. In 1975, with my first visit to L’Arche in Trosly-Breuil, France, and to the community of Taize in France, I was made familiar with Brother Charles once again and the impact he had on the life of both Jean Vanier and Brother Roger of Taize, that ‘Jean Vanier built L’Arche on one shoulder of Brother Charles and Brother Roger, on the other.’

At the start of the 20th century, French Charles de Foucauld had found himself living in the Sahara Desert, among the Muslim Tuareg, discovering in them, the gift of the ‘one who is different’. Brother Charles’ journey led him to deepen the mystery of ‘presence’ and the call to ‘be with’ rather than to ‘do for’. He saw this as the path to communion.

Later, Brother Roger of Taize was to advance this charism in the intuition of brothers of different religions and cultures living together in community. Likewise, Jean Vanier advanced the charism in the intuition of people with visible and invisible handicaps living together as one, as a family. “Welcome” has been foundational to the life of both communities. Both recognize the gift of openness to the one who is different. Both inherit a gift from the new saint-to-be, Charles de Foucauld.

A central aspect of the spirituality of Brother Charles: “Always desire the lowest place, the place no one can take from you” is a call from the Spirit embedded in the spirituality of L’Arche. In the course of nearly 50 years, I witnessed Jean Vanier live this, day in, day out, in the smallest decisions, in the largest settings

When at the World Council of Churches gathering of thousands, just before he gave his address, he realized he had lost the papers containing his talk, he came to bow his head to pray, and surely descended to the ‘lowest place’ of total trust in God … and went forward from there to the stage and delivered a stunning address … to doing the wash up after meals, years in, years out, to stepping down from authority within his community, from various Councils which he had started up, …to sitting with a house mate in distress to the extinguishing of anguish, returning together to frolic and play with the community after the meal. I am witness to this, and to how, as his end neared, and arrived, he lived and continues to live this spirituality.

DEATH OF A FRIEND

At Jean Vanier’s funeral, Didier spoke, or was helped to speak, as his speech was limited. He and Jean Vanier had shared life together at their home, the Val Fleuri for close to 60 years. Didier told of how Jean took him periodically and predictably to the restaurant ‘and Jean paid!’ and they passed time together and their friendship grew and grew.

In 1975, when I first visited L’Arche, I was struck by how upstairs in the hall way of one of the foyers, a table and two chairs was set for two of the assistants to have lunch together. Friendship was considered an essential nourishment for people to be able to live the call of L’Arche, and everything was done to foster and encourage the growth of friendship.

Jean Vanier spoke about the table, the meal as being the heart of friendship sharing a meal together, and the central charism of L’Arche the experience of belonging together through the experience of the meal.

My last visit with the living Jean Vanier was in February 2018. When he saw me, he was so keen to tell me his story. “I travelled to London” he said, with a group from here. “We went to present our new film to the Queen. When we arrived at the room where we were to meet her, she spotted me and dismissing all protocol – she leapt from her seat and walked right across the room, and looked me straight in the eye, and said: ‘Jock!’ “Jock” he said “is the name my Scottish nanny called me when I was a child. That is the way she knew me all those years ago.”

Much touched me in this sharing. It touched me in how it revealed the discretion with which Jean Vanier had lived his entire life.