Jean Vanier: We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do...

Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closedness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart.

Jean Vanier

understanding humanity heart

In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.

Jean Vanier

important helping people

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.

Jean Vanier

community want people

It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community.

Jean Vanier

our-world pain compassion

To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

Jean Vanier

importance shows love

Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.

Jean Vanier

culture-religion capacity-to-love heart

Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

Jean Vanier

knowing love mean

Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.

Jean Vanier

who-we-are identity want

To love someone is not first of all to do things for them,but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: 'You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.'

Jean Vanier

important attitude beautiful

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.

Jean Vanier

competition kindness heart

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.

Jean Vanier

broken self children

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.

Jean Vanier

community people way

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness

Jean Vanier

love-yourself learning acceptance

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

Jean Vanier

difficulty weakness quality

I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds.

Jean Vanier

pain believe father

When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration.

Jean Vanier

our-society joy believe

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us

Jean Vanier

lessons profound people

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.

Jean Vanier

self-confidence responsibility healing

There is a struggle inside you between these two parts. It's as if at times your heart becomes a battlefield! The secret part, full of light, seems so small and weak in the face of the discouraging and morbid part, which seems enormous and overwhelming. However, if you light a small candle in a dark room, everything is lit up. It is a matter of trusting in this little light in the deepest part of your being which can gradually chase away the darkness.

Jean Vanier

struggle dark heart

Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.

Jean Vanier

brother love-you giving

We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?