Jean Vanier, Missionary of Tenderness

We grieve the death of Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche. We are grateful to God for the gift he was, and will continue to be, for mission.
 
A lot will be said about Jean Vanier over the next several weeks as we wrap our hearts and heads around the sanctity of this man and rightly so. What we do not want to lose sight of – and what we want to ponder, celebrate and proclaim – is that Jean Vanier was a missionary.
 
The missionary is a witness to the redeeming love of God poured out in Jesus Christ. God’s love for humanity took on human flesh. Jean embodied this truth; his first rule for becoming more human was to be at ease with our own bodies. Jean was a friend of Jesus and witnessed to his love in the integrity of his life, in what he did, and in the words he used.
 
Missionaries go to live with people on the periphery of society. Jean lived with men and women with severe disabilities. He was willing to cross the border built by words like strong and weak, able and disable, articulate and mute, deaf and hearing. Jean lived here. That is such an odd statement. But too often we do not live with people – even people in our own homes. We share a common space, but our lives are not intertwined. Jean inhabited the space given to him - his body, home, community, town, country, world.
 
Jean’s journey into the heart of tenderness took him, in his own words, “from repulsion to compassion, and from compassion to wonderment.” These words cut deep in our deeply divided, ideologically driven, polarized political climate. Can we look at Speaker Nancy Pelosi and move beyond repulsion, to compassion, to wonder? Can we look at President Donald Trump and move beyond repulsion, to compassion, to wonder? These words were not aspirations for Jean, they were his rule of life.
 
Jean stood at awe at the mystery of his own life, the mystery of the lives of others, and our shared human story. He sought and embodied the value of emotions, the importance of story, of presence, of accompaniment. The Gospel can only take root in a culture if it is first expressed in an encounter with another person as a person who already loved as they are.
 
Pope Francis said that mission is at once, a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people. Jean Vanier embodied this passion.
 
Jean Vanier, missionary of tenderness, pray for us.