Arts & Culture

MORE EARTHY AND MORE HEAVENLY

by Kathryn Spink

The plan, according to which everything had happened so swiftly, had also made use of "the fragility of the person in it." That was the way God worked, Jean Vanier recognized --"through what is clean and what is dirty." His own fragility was very complex. He could easily become the naval officer, but behind the capacity of the naval officer was vulnerability. Power in people invariably hid vulnerability in a way which gave him occasion often to speak with curiously vivid imagery of "the wolf at the door of the wound." The wolf in each person was frequently orientated to efficacy. What in his case, the vulnerability was behind the wolf he was not quite certain. He sensed only that

... in each of us there is immense anguish, a fragility which can come out in different ways, confronted by relationships that could lead to anguish, by people whose anguish reveals our own anguish, our fear of contradiction …You're never quite sure what is a power that is given you to go forward which shouldn't be contradicted and what is the fragility that should be contradicted.

     In everyone's journey there were inevitably moments when he or she went through "breakages" or "passages" in the process of bringing together the poor and the rich person inside each one. His illness in the spring of 1976 was one such moment in his own life. With hindsight he could see that he had been moving at a speed that was much too fast for his body. The frequent air travel, the nights spent at times on airport benches, the contact with suffering in all its multifarious forms which he found himself "carrying a little in my flesh," the strains of being constantly available to people, of being the bearer of the message of the poor to the sometimes reluctantly receptive rich, of sleeping in different beds in different climates had finally taken their toll. "I wasn't listening sufficiently to Jesus in my body, and so at one moment my body said, 'Stop.'"

     L'Arche had a way of calling for the body to be given appropriate recognition: in the understanding of the church, in the formation of community, in the lives of individuals. It was as if Jean had in some way to live that recognition in his one flesh. He had contracted amoebic hepatitis, together with a secondary infection to which doctors did not put a name but which was undoubtedly related to exhaustion and the failure to take proper medical precautions in tropical climates. During the two months he spent in the Cochin hospital in Paris he discovered in a more personal way the path of death and resurrection. There he experienced also, the possibility for the first time, what it was to be assisted rather than to be an assistant. He learned new lessons in patience, for the doctors were unable to tell him how long he would be confined to bed, and he very soon realized that it would take him time in his weakened condition before he was able to walk let alone fly again. Jean Vanier professed not to have too much difficulty in accepting illness any more than any other "breakage" in life:

That doesn't mean to say there haven't been difficult moments, moments when I've touched anger and so on, but I can't say I am someone who has suffered a great deal. I've matured I think but I can't say I have difficulty accepting. I think there is something in me which gives me the possibility of advancing peacefully.

     When he looked at the suffering of others he sensed his own limits:

My capacity to bear inner pain or anguish is probably less than many others, so God can't give me too much. Of course he can, but I think we each have our psyche which permits us to go only a certain distance. It has always been very gentle for me.

     Confined to his sick bed, he did not lose the ability to exclaim, "Alleluia," a much used exclamation in l'Arche, at the smallest intimation of good fortune. His capacity to find humour wherever there was the least potential for it did not fail him. The fall of the mercury after it had nearly burst the thermometer was cause for amused satisfaction. So too was the fact that his height had induced the hospital staff to provide him with a bed in which General de Gaulle had slept when undergoing treatment in the Cochin hospital: "It's just a simple hospital bed, only longer than others. Praise the Lord!" Nevertheless the message of the experience, namely to rest, was undoubtedly a sacrifice for him in which the regular presence of Père Thomas at his bedside was a necessary source of support. It was the first time in 12 years since I'Arche had begun that they had spent so much time together. "He helps me to abandon myself, to be more inwardly silent," Jean Vanier wrote at the time. He also wrote to the l'Arche communities asking them to pray he remain faithful and able to take advantage of this period of inactivity to discover anew "activity" because this was perhaps the time to discover the Jesus who "dwells in our hearts and asks only that we remain faithful in his love." In the sleeplessness of those hospital nights he had time to think of all those who were alone, and to recognize how fortunate he was to have so many brothers and sisters who loved him.

There are so many people who are alone, hidden in hospitals, prisons, flats and rooms, so many rejected, wounded, unloved people. Let us pray together for them, and give thanks for all the love and peace that Jesus gives us, which unites us and which we are called to share. And at the heart of this unity and peace for all the "Raphaels" of this world in whom the hidden Jesus is a source of peace and joy.

     Jean Vanier appears to have emerged from the "breakage" of this illness in a state of greater equilibrium than had previously been his. Thérèse Vanier was certain that the doctors advising him told him a few home truths of a kind that no one else could. The experience prevented him from pushing himself to quite the same extremes, from spending nights without sleep and completely disregarding his own fatigue. It also pointed him towards a more reflective role. In did not, however, prevent him from continuing to rush around the world.

     New Year's Eve of 1976 saw both Jean and Thérèse Vanier knocking on the door of Stephen Verney's house in Sussex. Books had a way of finding their way into Jean Vanier's hands at a time when they were likely to strike a special chord of recognition. On this occasion the book was Stephen Verney's Into The New Age. The title was a translation of the Greek words eis ton aiona, which occur like a refrain through St. John's Gospel. Stephen Verney had written of how as humanity stood at the edge of a new epoch he believed that the new age could be entered for good rather than ill through the discovery of interdependence.

Kathryn Spink is the biographer of Mother Teresa, Little Sister Magdeleine and Brother Roger of Taizé. Her books have been translated into more than fifteen languages, and have been awarded a number of prizes.

     This is an excerpt from The Miracle, The Message, The Story: Jean Vanier and L'Arche published by Novalis. It appears here with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the book contact: 1-800-387-7164 or e-mail: books@novalis.ca