Introduction and Interview: Martina Vuk, Ph.D. Candidate & FNS Fellow UNIFR.CH
After more than 50 years of sharing life with people with learning and developmental disabilities, writing a significant opus of spiritual books, helping in building the peace among different people and cultures, and promoting social justice and inter-religious dialogue, Jean Vanier was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2015 for his spiritual and humanitarian contribution to the world. Pope Francis’s particular interest and pastoral activities thematically underpin Vanier’s work. In 2014, Pope Francis met with Vanier and L’Arche community members at the Vatican. Moreover, as part of his monthly visits during the Year of Mercy, the Pope visited the L’Arche community in Rome, Italy, and spent an afternoon with the members sharing a snack. It is worth noting that there are many links between the concept of relationship that is being lived in L’Arche and the Christian vocation of service and acceptance of others, regardless of class, race, religious and ethnic background to which the Pope himself constantly appeals. Therefore, the encounter between Vanier and Pope Francis before the Year of Mercy was really a kairos moment and a call to live out joy and hope in fulfilling practical Christian living. It is also a call signaling that the theology from above and theology from below truly meet as the two dimensions of one reality, not only through dialogue but also, and primarily, through an encounter. In an interview with Martina Vuk, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, Jean Vanier talks about the difference between experience and theory, the notion of dialogue, mercy, justice and forgiveness.
MV: In academia, we often confront a gap between our theoretical knowledge and experience. Is our theoretical knowledge insufficient and why do we need experience?
JV: The whole of humanity is built up through experience. And then we reflect on that experience. For instance, until recently, Catholics were not expected to speak to Protestants, at least theoretically. But then we met, and we discovered that many Protestants are holy people. Pope Francis said: “Go to the periphery and meet the people.” When you meet them, you also discover something, and you receive some of their wisdom. The poor and the broken on the streets, faced with pain and death, have certain wisdom that we are not capable of having. So, what is particular in this? Isn’t this a discovery of the presence of another person, of someone who has a gift to give to me? So, to be with the different leads us to a very specific humility. The danger of a human person is to desire to be the best. We define our identity through winning. But we can also find our identity through a communion with another person. What is that communion? That’s an element that is difficult to explain. What is this communion with Jesus? It is hard to define it, but we can experience that feeling of oneness – of you and me being together. We can experience these, yet we cannot define them too closely. We can define what the war is, what a separation is, but it is difficult to define what communion and togetherness are. And there in the mystery of people with disabilities that we can discover through the body. And you find that in a beggar and in the person with a disability because they are closer to the wisdom of the body than the wisdom of intellectuality. There are also the mentally ill or the people with Alzheimer’s who are close to the body, and who have something to tell us about the body.
MV: What is according to you the biggest problem of contemporary men and women?
JV: The sadness and the lack of belief in the growth. When I say the lack of belief in the growth, I am not talking about knowledge and having more money – we know that. To grow in humanity means letting barriers of fear to drop. The meeting is all about two people coming together in recognition of the fact that we are all human beings, and that is the place of growth. It requires us not to be afraid of people of other cultures, and to let out barriers fall. Which means that I discover the secret that I am not just that what is seen at the exterior or what I achieve, but a person who yearns to be loved and who wants to love others, and to discover the joy of loving other people.
We can define what the war is, what a separation is, but it is difficult to define what communion and togetherness are. And there in the mystery of people with disabilities that we can discover through the body. And you find that in a beggar and in the person with a disability because they are closer to the wisdom of the body than the wisdom of intellectuality.
MV: And do you think this could be possible in dialogue with Islam?
JV: We have to work on it. Bishop Pierre Claverie who was killed in Oran said the important thing is to meet Muslims not just to dialogue with them. There is something prior to that dialogue, and that is a meeting of two people coming together. We have to work on it. There is a danger in Islam of a sort of tribal element, but some are becoming free of that. As you can see, people in Tunisia and Egypt want to meet, they want a change. So it was the case with the Second Vatican Council which represented a conversion. Yet, there are many “traditionalist” Christians that still are frightened by Vatican II. In that sense, there are Muslims who become free and want to meet, and there are Christians who also become free and want to meet. There is hope that exists between two people who are open to meet each other.
MV: We are living in the era of rapid technological progress in all areas particularly in biomedicine. Improvements in modern medicine and pharmacy have been also beneficial to people with disabilities. Yet, there are numerous attacks on human life from conception till the end, with the intention to eliminate suffering. Modern law and medicine is particularly hostile towards fragile and vulnerable life stages or individuals. What is your answer to that? Where does the actual problem lie? Could prevention of suffering bring more progress to our time?
JV: There is something about our humanity that we are born in great fragility, we will die in great fragility, and that we are fragile. The meaning of fragility is to bring us back to reality. The reality is that we are body and spirit. And what is most important? It is to work for peace. Andrea Riccardi said in a beautiful expression that community is founded in history and is a hope for utopia. Francis, the Pope, defines utopia as a possible outcome of what we desire. Similarly, the mission of L’Arche is to work and to be with people with disabilities because we believe that they are fully human and that they are open and loved by God. But the utopia is that we would like the world to be like that. And what is the influence of L’Arche on the world? It is that other people can discover that we do not have to be in the struggle between power and love. We are so often told, even in school, that we have to be powerful and to achieve the most. In reality, however, the most important question is not whether we would write the best thesis or not, but the way how do we live, how open we are to people, how do we love people. So there are two visions of humanity: one is the vision of winning and another is the vision of being open to other.
To grow in humanity means letting barriers of fear to drop. The meeting is all about two people coming together in recognition of the fact that we are all human beings, and that is the place of growth. It requires us not to be afraid of people of other cultures, and to let out barriers fall.
MV: What would be your message to the Church regarding theology?
JV: My message to theologians would be to come and to spend time in the prison or to work in a palliative care, with people with disabilities or homeless people, in order to have experience with the weak. Because the great challenge is to move from the head to the heart. In the head we have certitudes, but in the heart we don’t. We enter into a relationship with someone who we do not know, and we do not know where that could lead us. So it is a risk, and it takes time. In Australia, there was a guy a long time ago who was dying from an overdose, and his last words were: “you always wanted to change me, you never wanted to meet me.” To meet is not easy. To listen, to enter into a relationship with somebody who is different, all that is not easy. We are in the world that wants to change people to become like them, like me, but we are scared of an encounter.
MV: What does our time need the most today?
JV: To live experience of humanness! And this comes back to Pope Francis. He is inviting people to mercifulness, to compassion. Leviticus said: “be holy as I am holy”. Jesus said “be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.” To be holy is to be pure, to be compassionate means to put your “head in mouth” [i.e. put yourself at risk and incertitude, MV], and get your “hands in dirt”. So what the Francis is calling us to is not the purity of the faith but the relationship with people, to get our hands dirty in a relationship, in a meeting with another person.
In Australia, there was a guy a long time ago who was dying from an overdose, and his last words were: “you always wanted to change me, you never wanted to meet me.” To meet is not easy. To listen, to enter into a relationship with somebody who is different, all that is not easy. We are in the world that wants to change people to become like them, like me, but we are scared of an encounter.
MV: Many people talk about forgiveness, but when it comes to real situations, it is hard to forgive. It seems that people are more keen on justice than forgiveness. You have been soldier in the British Navy, throughout life you have met different people, world leaders and politicians, Mother Theresa, John Paul II, and many others. As a spiritual writer you have given many retreats, people come to you with different kinds of problems, opening their soul to you. Why is it so difficult for people to forgive? And why do justice and forgiveness as virtues often seem to be in contradiction?
JV: We need to protect our identity and our identity is the identity of “I am right and you are wrong.” We need to discover that it is not important who is right and who is wrong, but to come together. That is why we have restorative justice now, where a victim meets a perpetrator, the evil one. They meet as two people in pain. So forgiveness applies a big shift in identity, the realization “I belong to the human race and my mission is the mission of peace and of unity.” That can only come if we accept to meet and lower our barriers. And forgiveness is to slash barriers so that I can meet you and you can meet me back.
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