Jean Vanier and L’Arche as a Witness of Merciful Love

Abstract

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/pepsi-2017-0010

Jean Vanier is the founder of two major international community-based organizations for people with intellectual disabilities: the L’Arche Communities and the “Faith & Light” movement. He is a great Catholic and a teacher of merciful love. His life is a message to the world that each person is an infi nite value for who they are, not for what they can do, and that each person is unique and sacred, no matter of their health condition, disability or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image and each one has an inner beauty, a capacity to love and to be loved, and possesses inherent qualities of belonging, bonding, friendship and spirituality. Persons with intellectual disabilities are a gift for the society. Thanks to the testimony of his life, Jean Vanier has developed the international network of L’Arche Communities all over the world. The communities are based on family-like residential communities, where people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together in the spirit of faith, dignity of every human being, understanding, love and joy. The L’Arche homes and communities are rooted in the ideas of “living with,” and not just “doing for” those with mental disabilities. Weakness carries a secret power within, it can open up the hearts to God’s grace. Our contemporary world strongly needs the weak, as they evangelize us, transform us and help us to be more human. They help us discover that the good news of Jesus is announced not to those who serve the poor, but to those who are themselves poor and need God’s merciful love and forgiveness.