Jean Vanier Tribute

Tuesday May 7 2019

Thomas Baldwin pays tribute to Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, who died this morning.

It is a soft voice, with a hint of a French-Canadian accent, that has stayed with me, more than a decade on. Jean Vanier spoke so quietly – almost a whisper – but something about it was utterly compelling, almost hypnotic. A room full of people, including children and people with severe disabilities, was completely silent.

“As close as we can get to sitting at the feet of Christ,” is how one volunteer described it to me. I wrote “This really is the ‘still, small voice’.”

It was April 2007 and I had been with Life and Work for less than four months when I was sent to a L’Arche retreat in Edinburgh to meet Vanier. He was nearly 80 and must have been exhausted at the end of a busy weekend, but he was warm and generous to a nervous young interviewer, with twinkly-eyed humour.

But there was steel in there too, a single-minded commitment to his mission and his message. Trosly-Breuil – where he founded a community with three people with disabilities in 1963 - was home, and no matter how big the L’Arche organisation got, or how personally garlanded he became, he left only to spread the message that (in his words): “The whole question for humanity is how to help the strong and the weak to live together.”

When I mentioned his awards (already holder of the French Légion d’Honneur and Companion of the Order of Canada, he went on to receive the Templeton Prize) it was met with a stereotypically Gallic shrug and a dismissive: “My life is not going round looking for awards. My life is for living with my people.”

Vanier’s commitment to the disabled (and the poor, people in prison, and the just generally difficult to love) went deeper than altruism. He saw the presence of Jesus in such people, believing strongly that they were people from whom he could learn. The essence of L’Arche is not of the strong doing things for the weak, but of everyone living and growing together in friendship; and Vanier lived that simple message of friendship and love for all for nearly 60 years.

It was a message that spread from Trosly-Breuil to more than 140 L’Arche communities in 24 countries around the world; and more than 1420 Faith and Light communities (the non-residential sister organisation) in 86 countries, and through his many books. His is a light that will take a very long time to go out.

L’Arche announced his death this morning, aged 90, in Paris. In his final message he said: “I am deeply peaceful and trustful. I’m not sure what the future will be but God is good and whatever happens it will be the best. I am happy and give thanks for everything. My deepest love to each one of you.”