Jean Vanier: “Hope lies in the true encounter”
I recently put on Facebook a link to an interview in Le Figaro with Jean Vanier, perhaps the greatest living Canadian and winner of the 2015 Templeton Prize. In the context of a summer examination of the classic virtues, the Figaro's journalist, Guyonne de Montjou, asked him to comment on Hope. Vanier is such a remarkable man that it seemed worth while translating the interview into English, which herewith. NB: unlike English, French has two words for hope: espoir and espérance. The latter is slightly more formal and grand. So I have used the capital H to express it.
Introduction:
The
work of Jean Vanier, 87, shows and expresses his Hope. “L’Arche” which he
founded more than 50 years ago, counts 150 communities in 38 countries. In
those homes, mentally handicapped persons live together with those who
accompany them, for six months, for a year, for a lifetime. Via the daily
routine, Hope is established and consolidated: hope for a world in which no one
will feel excluded.
When we speak of
Hope, who comes to your mind?
First of all Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years in
prison, most of them at hard labour. Maltreated, threatened, he knew – in his
body, in his bones – that one day he would come out. Why? I don’t know. Where
does that knowledge come from? That’s the real question. What I see is that he
had the certainty that in the end justice would prevail. For him, it was
inconceivable that evil would have the last word. That gave him the strength
not to resign himself. Beyond evil there is always something else that draws
us. That’s what Hope is. I strongly believe in that little inner voice that
calls without ceasing and encourages us to see far.
Why do you say that
Nelson Mandela’s Hope was rooted in his body?
Because we are spirit
AND body. At the beginning we spend nine months inside a body, in security. And
then our life begins with that cry that also expresses the anxiety toward the
infinity opening out before us. We cry because we no longer know what to do.
For me, Hope lies in that cry of the newborn who calls for the arms, the
security, who looks for communion. And so, for a bond, an encounter,
tenderness. Something in human life is
marked with the seal of the Infinite, with that hunger for the Beyond. And also
with the need for relation.
You describe Hope as
“the little inner voice”. Charles Péguy, in his poem “The Porch of the Mystery
of the Second Virtue” (1912), speaks of “little Hope”. Why is Hope so discreet?
How would you define it?
The “little inner voice” is not a feeling. It’s deeper than
that. It is an attraction to justice. To Truth. To Love. It’s a pull, a
drawing, it’s not the fruit of discernment. The Second Vatican Council defined
the place where we hear that little voice: in the individual conscience, that
holy and intimate sanctuary where God speaks to each human being to help it to
orient itself toward justice and truth. To turn it away from evil. The little
voice is an attraction.
Is Hope the same as
optimism?
No, optimism is a psychological attitude. One is optimistic
because one feels too vulnerable to contemplate the glass as being half empty.
Optimism, I believe, is less profound than Hope. Andrea Riccardi, the founder
of Sant’Egidio, an association of more than 50,000 people in the service of the
poorest and of peace, writes in his book on Pope Francis that every community
is rooted in a history and is oriented towards “the hope of a utopia”. For
example, at L’Arche, we help the shattered ones, the persons who are
handicapped, to grow. We know that relationship lies at the core. As we live
together, the mission is clear. We welcome people like Pauline, a 40-year-old
paraplegic who all her life had been treated as garbage, to give them
confidence in themselves. We do not want to change them, we simply want to
encounter them with tenderness. We are filled with the utopian idea that the
world is changing; instead of arming for war and showing that one is stronger
than one’s neighbour, we feel that another world is possible. Each day we
discover that communion is what’s important: a bond, via bodies, eyes, hands.
Here we receive people who have been humiliated. And they begin to dance, to
live, to grow, and to fill us with joy simply because of a bond of listening.
But it is difficult truly to describe what
is so small, so intimate, so discreet. I am convinced that the bond of
communion between mother and child is the beginning of the red thread of the
whole of life. We are always looking for that bond of understanding. Communion
is linked to littleness, to humility. In order to obtain it, you say to the
other, “At bottom, I’m no better than you. I need you.”
Someone else who, to
you, incarnates Hope?
A man who I think incarnates Hope today is Pope Francis,
precisely because he listens to that little inner voice. He doesn’t know where
it will lead him, but he knows one thing: that we are healed by the poor. To go
to the periphery, to the edges, means to listen to the way the marginal people,
the poor, the burdened evangelise us and lead us to their wisdom. That is his
essential message and it seems to me to carry Hope with it. The wisdom of the
poor is the opposite of that of the world which always invites us to move up. Moving
up is, somehow, pushing others aside in order to win. Going toward the wisdom
of the poor touches humanity at its earthiest, its fleshliest and its most
bodily. It is a cry. A cry to be recognised. I am moved by every story of humiliation.
The humiliated cry out to be recognised. The great problem of our time is the
separation between rich and poor. A billion and a half people live in
shantytowns. And each day, another 100,000 people in the world join them, drawn
by the big city’s ideal of consumerism, its materialist model. What do those
humiliated people need? Someone who sees them and who believes in them.
Why to you does the cry
of the humiliated, the poor, the handicapped represent a call, a plea?
Because it awakens something in the depths of my heart that
gives me life. St Francis of Assisi tells how when he came out of prison, when
he was barely 24, he found himself mysteriously attracted by a group of lepers
even though previously he had found lepers repulsive. Something had changed in
him. So he moved in with those lepers and shared their life. When, after two
years among them, he continued on his way, he wrote, “I found a new gentleness
in my body and in my spirit.” Finally, that experience of shared living had let
him see the leper within himself. Often, when our heart is hard, if we protect
ourselves and refuse to hear the cry of the poor, it is because we are afraid to
reveal our own poverty. Recognising one’s limits allows one to enter into
communion with the other.
In the midst of a
society like ours, where the prime objectives are performance and success,
where does one learn humility?
By not knowing. I knew a man who was perfect, who was
successful in his marriage, in his career, in his family. One day. one of his
daughters was born with a mental illness. He was completely lost. It was that
little sick girl who taught him that there is something more to life than
success. I think one learns humility when one looks for simple and true
relationships. When one visits prisons, or the sick, one discovers that those
one thought worthless are in fact terrific people. Everyone can do that. One
doesn’t need a degree for encounters.
Do you think you have
acquired a certain wisdom?
Not at all. I learn every day. A pharmacist, a woman, taught
me something. Sometimes people come to her who suddenly say something very
important. She told me that one of her clients came with her young son, and
explained to her that he had lived through something dramatic and tragic. She
was at once sad and furious. The pharmacist listened to her with great
attention without saying a word. She showed her, with her regard, that she
empathised with her suffering, that she felt compassion. But she said nothing.
I asked her, what is wisdom? That woman answered me, “wisdom is the space, the
time of silence, the regard which explains that you have understood the other’s
suffering without necessarily speaking.”
In these times of
families in mourning and where terrorism creates a desire for revenge, do you
think that every man, the most radical of ideologues or a sanguinary criminal,
is capable of amendment?
Of course. Who am I to judge him? I believe that each human
being contains a seed of innocence. It
is buried inside him and functions as a base. I call it the seat of conscience,
which goes deeper than the person himself. It is the inner place where one’s
being is not shaped. That is why I think we should sometimes become like small
children again, and touch the other’s innocent side. I believe that each true
encounter between two people implies that virgin point, a certain humility, an
attitude that can say, “I am no better than you.” When we help someone up who
has tripped and fallen in the street, it changes us. Every human being is
capable of that. Each man, whatever his way in life, whatever his suffering,
hopes that someone will regard him with tenderness, without judgement, to
discover the place of his innocence. One simply has to learn to welcome the
other. And then one changes the world.
An example?
In the United States, a friend of mine, a doctor in a
palliative-care unit, was called to care for a mafia boss who had throat
cancer. All his life this man had wanted to be strong. And now, suddenly, he
discovered someone who touched him with tenderness. Vulnerable now, he saw this
doctor coming to his aid with goodness and gentleness. All his life he had
believed that adults were bad and that one had to defend themselves from them.
That was why with all his strength he had constructed a shell: deep down he
must have had a fear of suffering. I believe that this story helps us
understand the role of the encounter: it is the ingredient that nourishes Hope.
Doesn’t your sense of
Hope for man sometimes come close to a certain naiveté?
Perhaps. I’ll admit
that sometimes I’ve been wrong. For example one time, I was working in a prison
retreat in Winnipeg in Canada. They had seconded to me a pleasant prisoner,
agreeable, near the end of his sentence, to help me. He was my secretary and
was indeed devilishly efficient. He wanted to do his rehabilitation in the East
of the country. So I recommended him to friends of mine to welcome him and help
him with his first steps. I gave him their address. A few weeks later I had a
call from my friends thanking me for the contact . . . the man, the ex-prisoner
who had gained my trust, had disappeared with their stereo! Trusting is not
always simple. There is always a risk. If I had listened more to the prison
staff, I would have been more on my guard. They had warned me that this
prisoner knew just how to inspire trust.
What circumstances
taught you about Hope?
What helped me most was the confidence of my father [Georges
Vanier, diplomat, later Governor-General of Canada – RK]. I’m a Canadian, but I
spent part of my childhood in England where my father was a diplomat. At the
age of 13 I expressed the wish to join the Royal Navy. My father who had spent
three years in the trenches near Amiens in World War I, said, “If that’s what
you want to do, do it. I have confidence in you.” If he had said no, my life
would have been different. The confidence he had in me was decisive, his
greatest gift. I remained in the Navy for eight years. When I left it, I knew I
had to go. Then I started L’Arche with the same conviction that this was my
way. The little inner voice, still, that profound, intimate pull toward
justice. Today, it seems to me that the most important thing is helping
children to have confidence in their desire. That isn’t all that simple. To
teach them how to trust that pull toward what is good. One can make mistakes,
certainly, but time will tell.
What do you want to
say to the young?
The other day I hosted a group of young people. They all had
their smartphones in their pockets! I told them, “Here we don’t need experts in
communication. What we are looking for is experts in presence.” Being present:
it seems such a little thing! And it takes time . . . I spend time with you and
I can’t spend it with someone else. But it is the only way to communion. Once
one has tasted it, one can’t do without it. I still hope that when one person
has changed, others will change. Deep down, that’s what my Hope is. “Encountering,
meeting” is the keyword of Hope. It is the poor who will lead us to peace. In
our world we need to create places where people can meet, play, live,
experience something together. Once everyone has had a taste of that, everyone
wants it to recommence. In a class, we need to pay attention to the student
others make fun of; in society, we need to care for the person suffering beside
us. Rather than in moving up, it’s in coming down to the humblest that we find
ourselves transformed.
