Jean Vanier
Jean Vanier
Jean Vanier, CC GOQis a Canadian Catholic philosopher, theologian and humanitarian. He founded L'Arche in 1964, an international federation of communities spread over 35 countries, for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them. Subsequently in 1971, he co-founded Faith and Light, with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, which also works for people with developmental disabilities, their family and friends in over 80 countries. He continues to live as a member of the original L'Arche community in Trosly-Breuil, France...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth10 September 1928
CountryCanada
Love is to recognize that the other person is a person, is precious, is important and has value.
To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.
We cannot grow spiritually if we ignore our humanness, just as we cannot become fully human if we ignore our spirituality.
The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.
Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us
Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide.
Love is an act of endless forgiveness.
[Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness
The person in misery does not need a look that judges and criticizes but a comforting presence that brings peace and hope and life and says: 'you are a human person: important, mysterious, infinitely precious, what you have to say is important because it flows from a humn person; in you there are those seeds of the infinite, those germs of love... of beauty which must rise from the earth of your misery so humanity be fulfilled. If you do not rise then something will be missing... Rise again because we all need you... be loved beloved.'
A community is only a community when the majority of its members are making the transition from 'the community for myself' to 'myself for the community'.
Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.
Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.
A society which discards those who are weak and non-productive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organisation, aggression and the desire to dominate. It becomes a society without a heart, without kindness - a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry and, finally, violence.