Jean Vanier
When I speak1 about community and hope,2 I want to start by telling you something about Erik. As you know, in the Archa community, we live with people with severe disabilities. We create a community with them, which celebrates and hopes together. This does not mean that life in community is always easy, but you know that. So I want to start by telling you about Erik because we stand here face to face with a mystery. Erik was a young man we found in a psychiatric hospital. He was blind, deaf, and could not walk – I think I have never seen a young person with such great suffering in my life.
We live in a world where the weak are rejected. And we are afraid of the weak. About eighty percent of children with Down syndrome are killed by abortion. The disabled are seen as a burden. People are often scared of them, parents are embarrassed. And yet a mystery opens up before us. I would like to speak to you about what [we in Archa] discover: that we find healing through those we reject. Many of you know the story of Francis of Assisi. Francis said that he always hated lepers. They disgusted him; he felt a great aversion toward them. In his Testament, he states that one day the Lord brought him to lepers, and he stayed with them. And when he left them, he said: "In my spirit and in my body, there was a new sweetness – and since then, I have served the Lord." 3 In Francis's time, there were about twenty thousand lepers in Europe, and lepers were regarded as sinners. Leprosy was considered a punishment from God4 and lepers wandered aimlessly or were locked up in leper houses.
People like Erik have something in common with them. About a hundred years ago and even much later, perhaps fifty years ago, there were still places like Staten Island in New York,5 where about seven thousand disabled people were locked away. Today, you can find disabled people on the streets or placed in various facilities or locked up in psychiatric wards. I have experience with them: I visited those who are most pushed aside – those who are considered crazy, madmen, or dangerous individuals. Our vocation in the Archa community is to live with them, celebrate life together, and rejoice!
So, I wanted to tell you about Erik because Erik was very important to me. We met him when he was just ten years old, in a psychiatric hospital. He was in psychiatry because he was deafblind. The nurses and others didn't know how to approach him. When they approached him, he would hold them tightly because he was starving for contact. His mother suffered greatly. She already had three children, and when she found out how severe Erik's disability was, she felt completely lost. Her husband drove a truck and was often away. I gained a lot of experience with parents of disabled children, so we founded an organization called "Faith and Light": a small support community for parents, their sons and daughters, friends, etc. Now we have around 1500 of these communities in almost every country in the world. I have seen closely the pain of parents, from both Christian and non-Christian perspectives, but also that deep down in the conscience of these people is a feeling that if they have a disabled son or daughter, it is God's punishment. We see this already in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. When Jesus and his disciples encounter a blind man, the disciples immediately ask: "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" And Jesus's reaction is: "No! It is not so! He is blind so that the works of God might be made manifest in him."
I assert that disabled people are among the most marginalized in the world. There is no doubt that there has been significant progress; there are integrated schools, efforts toward the integration of these individuals are great at least in some countries, but generally speaking, people with disabilities are regarded with condescension and are despised, especially because we live in a culture of competition, chasing success and power. We live in a society where the tyranny of normalcy prevails. When I use the term "tyranny of normalcy", I want to capture: everyone must be the same! And in this tyranny of normalcy, young people, if they are beautiful, strong, and capable, rise up. If they are fragile...
Soon we will live in a world where – especially in wealthy countries – the number of weak people will exceed the number of the active population. I don't know if the church accepts this. In France, in a few years, the number of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease will reach one million. The (population) pyramid, which you can find in regions like Africa and India, a pyramid consisting of a small number of old people, then an active population, and finally plenty of children, is upside down in wealthy countries. Here, there are many weak people because we are able to keep alive those who are afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, and there are also many accidents, road incidents, various disabilities, mental illnesses, and depressions. Then there is the active population and finally a limited number of children. I am speaking of certain countries like Italy, France, and others, where there is very low mortality. As the years go by, we will therefore be confronted with the question: "What is the significance of Erik?" In our wealthy countries, this is generally handled by laws that enable us to get rid of these people. And you can be sure that soon euthanasia for people with Alzheimer's will be increasingly legalized by state laws. We must really ask: "What does this mean?" When Saint Paul says that the parts of the body that are weakest and which we clothe with clothing are indispensable to the body (1 Cor 12:22), what does this mean? Those who are weak, the weakest, and not representative are indispensable to the body... I pose this question to you. I have never [actually] seen a book on ecclesiology,6 which began: "The weak and non-representative are indispensable in the body of Christ." Perhaps we will penetrate a bit deeper into why they are indispensable when we ask: "Should we evangelize them, or should they evangelize us?" Let us ask in this way: "Are we evangelized by the weak?"
Let us return to Erik. It is necessary for us to understand more deeply certain elements of the human psyche, of human being. Above all, you can all imagine the pain of his mother. She was devastated by this situation. A blind and deaf child who cannot walk, terrible anxiety – what does it all mean? Some time ago, a woman came to me with her husband, who was expecting a child – a little girl named Gabrielle. This child suffered from a terminal illness, from which children die either in the womb or shortly after birth. She came to talk with me. She already had three children and for understandable reasons, was on the brink of depression. We talked together, and she came to lunch at the house where I live with the disabled. I couldn't do much more for her than just call her regularly. She said to me that she felt the baby kicking in her, she was happy – she felt [its] energy. Then she asked me: "Should I tell the other children?" And I answered: "Of course!" So she told her children – a three-year-old, a five-year-old, and a seven-year-old – that Gabrielle would probably die before being born. Her gynecologist, otherwise very considerate, and also her pediatrician pressured her to have an abortion. The pediatrician did not want to treat a child who would die. But her five-year-old child said: "Mommy, but she is so lucky, we must live long, and she will go straight to heaven!" Children sometimes have a wisdom that we do not possess... The little girl was born alive, was baptized, and died two days later. Parents, under pressure to choose abortion and [harassed by] the tyranny of normalcy, do not have it easy. I am not engaged in any major campaigns for "The Right to Life", but you can surely imagine my stance. However, I think that if people fight for the right to life, they should also care for those who are weak and not just lock them away in some institutions to eliminate them. This attitude (openness to those who are weak) must come from the church.
So, his mother put Erik in the hospital, and I want to tell you something about the relationship between children who suffer in some way and their mothers. Because the weakest teach us something about weakness, about vulnerability. All of us, when we were born, were small, weak, vulnerable, fragile. We could not defend ourselves. And what did we need? We needed a mom to tell us: "I love you. You are my beloved little boy, my beloved little girl." Uncertainty – that is the situation for all of us after birth. And we found that even though we were vulnerable, it turned out well because we were loved. Later, we became afraid of our vulnerability and fragility, but when we were children, as vulnerable as we were, we felt loved. Perhaps this is the fundamental experience of Jesus. It is not that we do good deeds, that we have studied theology, that we are active members of some community, and we do the right things, but that we are deeply loved. This is where it all begins – we are loved, God considers us precious.
An eleven-year-old disabled boy in a parish in Paris went to his first Holy Communion. After the Mass, a small celebration was held in the family. When it ended, one of the uncles and also the boy's godfather said to the mother: "That was a beautiful Eucharist. It's a shame he didn't understand anything." The mother cried, and when the boy saw her tears, he told her: "Mom, don't be sad, Jesus loves me just as I am." Which means: "I don't have to be how others want me to be; I can be myself. It's okay, mommy, don't cry, Jesus loves me just as I am." I have noticed that these words are often hard for people to accept because they often feel loved only if they try harder. If!
But this child has experienced what it means to be loved as he is, with his limitations and his poverty. And he can teach us something. What happens when a child discovers that his mother does not love him as he is? When a child sees that his mother and father are not happy with him, that he is a disappointment to his mother, and that she cries over him? Those of us who had a mother who embraced us and told us that we were precious started our lives with the awareness that we are weak and loved, and that it is okay. But if we do not have this experience, we have barriers within us that cause great anxiety. Erik did not know who he was. You can see this in many young people on the street, in young delinquents, in drug addicts – they do not know who they are! And perhaps many of them [never] experienced that someone told them: "I love you just as you are. And you are important; to me, you are important."
Erik came to us from the psychiatric hospital when he was sixteen – a fragile young man – and our task in the Archa community was not primarily to change him, but to accept him. Naturally, we also need professionals; thanks to our medical team, we were able to operate on his legs and it succeeded, and he walks now. Of course, when it comes to interacting with people who suffer physically or mentally, we need good psychiatrists, good doctors, good professionals. But our role is to accept the disabled person and to show him: "I am glad to be here with you." I often say that the pedagogy of Archa is to show the other: "I am glad to live with you; I am glad you are here," because usually the person has only heard, at least in his family, "You are a disappointment!" You see, to love someone means to show them that they are precious: "You are a child of God! You are precious. Maybe you can't do a lot of things, but you are precious." This is Francis's inner vision of lepers: "You are precious." If any of you had the privilege of working with prisoners or (with people) in disastrous conditions, you know that you are not there primarily to convert those people, but you are there primarily to tell them: "You are precious! You are important! You have worth!"
However, this is a long journey, and I would like to say something about the assistants who come to us and the progress they must make. Our task is to help assistants move from charity to community. Charity, as we know, means doing good for others. When we have more money, abilities, knowledge, we want to do good for others. And when we do good for others, we do good for ourselves; we feel good about it – I know that I am doing good now. So doing good brings satisfaction. And a person feels powerful. Thus, [our task here is] to help people move from charity – which gives, when we want to give, when [we determine] how much we will give, and [set] the time we devote... to move from this charity to the community, which means a real encounter – an encounter with you in your poverty – and means meeting Erik in his poverty.
When I finished my leadership role in my community in 1980, I came to live with Erik and others something that is "incarnation". To embrace the body, to touch the body, to help the body find its true value. I say that Archa is based on the body; not on the word, but on the body. Because the people who come to our communities come with broken bodies. Even though the word is of course important too. The whole mystery of the relationship between the word and the body is the mystery of the sacrament. The word and the body. I often say that proclaiming the gospel to the poor does not mean telling them: "God loves you", but: "I love you. I will stand up for you in the name of Jesus." We can hide behind words, but the body is proximity. As I say, it is a true incarnation. Here arises the mystery of the Virgin Mary, who touches the body of the Word made flesh, loves it, feeds it, washes it. I must say that the word becomes flesh in the same way that the body can become a word.
With people like Erik, it is a long-distance race. For sixteen years, he suffered; for sixteen years, he lived in anxiety – and anxiety is very different from fear. Fear is usually fear of something, and if we remove that "something", then fear disappears, and we no longer experience anxiety. Anxiety is something existential: who am I, do I have any worth, am I loved, am I important, do I really exist, where do I exist, what am I. People who are trapped in the trap of anxiety may fall into depression, because depression is one of the ways to face anxiety, as if a person represses their sensitivity or lets themselves be pulled out of the real world. Our task, therefore, was to accept Erik and show him that we are glad he exists, that it is nice to be with him. One thing moved us. When Erik came to us, he was not baptized. Occasionally, he came to the chapel, and it struck us that when he was in the chapel, even though he was blind and deaf, he seemed to have peace within him. When he stayed in the chapel, his face was calm, even though otherwise it had an expression of tension, anxiety, and constant inner movement. You know, in living with someone like Erik, who cannot express himself in words, we must try to understand him through the signs his body gives.
When Erik was so peaceful, we asked each other and our priests: "What is happening?" And we came to the conclusion that in those moments, God is revealing himself to Erik. It was not a certainty, just a supposition, but our conclusion was that God is making himself known to Erik. Not through words, but through inner peace. Because this is how God makes himself known – he reveals himself: in inner peace, in silence, gentleness, and tenderness. And thus, this gradually led us to the point where Erik was later baptized and received his first Holy Communion. Those were moments of great tenderness in him; he naturally made progress. We could not heal his body, his eyes, but we could in some way reach his heart, and I think Erik began to understand that there are people who care about him not because he does something better, but simply because he is a child of God and a member of human society. Erik died seven years later. He had a damaged chest, and one day he began to have trouble breathing; we rushed him to the hospital, but he died in the car.
We are therefore dealing with this mystery [of God's revelation in weak people] and how we help our assistants move from charity through doing good to [such a] manifestation of helping the disabled, wherein it is apparent that disabled people have something to give us. Each year, future priests come to our community for one month. During January and February, they were in five or six communities in our area. And these around 19 future priests requested at the end of their stay to meet with me. I said to them: "I do not want to lecture you; I would rather hear from you what you have experienced." Almost all responded that life in our houses has transformed them. I asked: "I do not understand; you are all future priests, and you say you have been transformed – merely by living with people that some call mad. What is the nature of this transformation? What have you experienced?"
My experience is that many of these future priests live "in their heads", but they have many difficulties in relationships. You know, when someone lives "in their head", they learn all kinds of things, and then they tell people what the truth is, but relationships are something else, they depend on listening, on [willingness and ability] to connect: tell me your story, tell me what you are experiencing – like the woman who came to me with little Gabrielle in her womb. Just simply tell me about your pain, about what you are living. I cannot change people's pain. All I can do is walk with you; I can call you every week. You see, I cannot change human pain. I do not know how to say anything nice in the face of pain. I fear words – those spiritual words that do not enter the human heart but remain outside. So it was when I visited a woman who had a severely disabled child and I asked her: "Have you confided in the priest?" She told me: "Yes, he came, spent a few minutes with me, saw my child and told me: ‘That is your cross!’ And he did not come again." That priest should have said: "I can come every week and bathe him – that is all I can do, but I would like you to know that I want to walk alongside you." As I said, we are called to be Archa, which is based on the body, but we are called to walk with pain because we cannot cure Erik or Françoise (Francis).
Yesterday, before I left for the airport, I visited Francis and asked her: "I am going to speak to the Carmelites; will you pray for me?" Francis is 78 years old and severely disabled, blind, bedridden. We took her into one of our small houses when she was about forty, so it has been 38 years. She was incontinent, could not eat alone, could not speak, etc. But I felt that before I came here to speak with you, I wanted her to pray for me – and she was looking at me with her unseeing eyes, listening to me, and I touched her face and said to her: "I need your prayers, I need your help." I do not know how much she understood me, but for our community, she is a very important person. Now she is 78 years old, and we do not know how long she will live; she cannot leave her room because she is too weak and might contract other diseases. But let me tell you one story about her. Peter is a young Canadian who came to live for a year in the house where Francis lives. Peter is 28 years old, and at a spiritual retreat, he shared this testimony: "They asked me to take care of Francis, and my heart stopped because I did not know what to do. She is blind, deaf, always just lying there, sometimes takes off all her clothes; I did not want to be with her and feed her. But then I accepted it." Peter went to her every day, two or three times as it was necessary to feed her. Then he said: "One day, Francis took my hand, looked at me, and smiled. I felt completely transformed; something happened within me – suddenly there was a relationship – it was a moment of grace. The presence of God, which I cannot understand, a strange moment in which we met: that which was deeper in her personality, hidden behind her illness, age, fragility, and helplessness, and I, who am part of that system of ‘normalcy’ that requires us to be beautiful, strong, and capable. And in that moment when we met, I was able to accept all my vulnerability and weakness. I am not what I do; I am something else; I am someone." Behold, this is the mystery.
We have many assistants who come for just a short time. They experience a deep experience and leave – such is the pressure of "normalcy", to make money, have power, be famous, be important. To live with Francis and Erik. I recently met with the parents of students from a secondary school in Paris, and one of the questions they asked me was: "What problems do you have?" I said: "One of our problems is the parents of our assistants." They all stared at me with astonished faces, and I repeated: "Yes, you! You are happy when your children go and spend six months with us because it helps them become good people; but when they stay with us to live with these disabled people, you do not want them to, and I know very well! Parents do not want their children to live the message of the gospel and to live with the poor and outcasts, especially with those seen as the lepers of our time." From all this pressure comes the pressure of "normalcy" to have well-being financially. [Yet] people can experience what Peter experienced. Some kind of mutual exchange of experiencing God through such mysterious encounters with those who are the most rejected and least desired. After all, we find that we are transformed, that we are [now] focused on relationships. But this too is a long journey and requires time. How many young people could come to your order after they have had an experience with God – heard the call. What does it mean? That in some area of their hearts, they have been touched by the message of the gospel and by Jesus. And they can come with enthusiasm, but you and I know how much enthusiasm can gradually fade, and eventually we become people who act with little enthusiasm. The question then arises: what is the basis of our hope, the hope that nourishes enthusiasm and desire.
That is the real question. You asked me to speak to you about community and hope. I need [your assistance] in this... I think we all need help. How can we support our communities to be places of hope, enthusiasm, and emotions? We have a message that we must pass on, a message that we need to bring to the world, and our world is in a difficult situation. There is pain and confusion everywhere. Where is hope? What hope can we show the world? Thus, we ask. This is the question of my assistants who experience the encounter with rejected people, subjected to the pressure of "normalcy" and the pressure to make money, influenced by the media and television. Television has a tremendous influence on the brain, on consciousness and the subconscious. A bishop once told me that he visited the Catholic schools in the diocese and was shocked to find that 90-95% of young people aged 16-17 have a television in their room where they sleep. Today, we have new educators – television and the internet! On Google, we can search for anything. And our minds and subconscious are manipulated, so where do we find enthusiasm and emotions?
Our communities are very fragile. There are many people waiting to come to Archa. We have five small communities in India, one in Kolkata. Can you imagine the number of disabled people on the streets of Kolkata or locked away in hospitals or other institutions? But who wants to live with them? That is the question. And how can we attract assistants, and how should we form them? What formation will lead to the people who want to show charity to come and discover the mystery – [I intentionally say mystery] – that we can be healed when we enter into a relationship with people like Erik. In Matthew 25 it is written: "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. (...) I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me. (...) Lord, when did we see you...? Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me." Is this also our experience? When we live with disabled people, it is not that we simply do something for them, but we live with them. Yes, we must also do it so that they can continue to thrive and work well, etc. But we are in a historical period where we are dominated by the tyranny of normalcy. Each of us must transcend [the focus on] success and learn to discover Erik's mystery and live with Erik and others. We have distanced ourselves from the mystery of the gospel message, which is a place of hope for our world.
Today, more and more interesting articles are appearing in the mainstream press. Until now, we have encountered individualism, a focus on personal success, personal recognition. But things are changing. Now we find in magazines: in the next ten years, we will live better if relationships become important. If we learn to live relationships. But relationships are difficult. You probably understand that you can direct a community by setting rules: when you get up, pray, etc. Following the rules in the community is something everyone can learn, but what does it mean to truly "love your neighbor"? What does this law of love that constitutes a community mean? We know we are not disciples of Christ, not merely because we go to Mass, pray, and know theology well, but because we love others. "By this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). And this is not simple. We all have our blocks, fears, prejudices against those who are different from us. We feel "trapped" in a relationship. We fear being truly open because the other could hurt us, and I could hurt them. We all calculate. It is not easy to create a community where we truly express ourselves, where we love one another. Such are your difficulties; such are the difficulties here. It is difficult – but I dare say that the community is a place where we walk together with the suffering, and above all, it is a place where we love one another not through any rule but in the way we are with Erik – that we notice what Erik needs – and not only what Erik needs but also what the assistants need.
Some assistants tell me how wonderful it is to be with the disabled, but for other assistants, it is terrible. The disabled are allowed to be disabled; that is who they are; it does not matter to them if they are crazy, but assistants must be like me; they must not be crazy; they must not be like this or that. But we all have our histories, histories of faith, falls, successes; we are all people in need. [As for] the history of our relationships: the hope, our hope, is that we can be a sign for this world, a sign that the weak must not be rejected because [there] they have their place, a sign that every human being is precious in God's eyes. Regardless of their religion. Some of us live in ecumenical communities or in communities made up of people of different religions. For example, in India, we live together with Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. We learn to live together in our shared humanity. Living together as Catholics does not necessarily mean it is easier than living with Hindus. Just because we have the same faith does not mean we love one another. We all have our history regarding wounds and difficulties in relationships; we are capable of running away from relationships, hiding from them, staying busy so that we do not have to meet others. We try to be a community in which we learn to love one another, each of us for who we are, with all our fragility. This is why I say it is a school of love with all the pain that it brings. My hope is that this is God's love for the weakest and the poorest, that He will send us many assistants because the heart of Archa is relationships. To create relationships, to agree that we are connected. I am glad that I could share our experience with you, I am glad that I can tell you that we need your prayers, and I am grateful for your invitation and for being able to tell you my – our story.
Translated from Italian by Martina Vintrová and P. Gorazd.
