Abstract
St John’s Gospel can be explored in several ways. Its historicity can be researched; texts, contexts and translations can be analysed; it can be read publicly or in private; it can be the focus of meditative prayer. However, in all of these ways, our study of the Gospel requires a degree of intellectual sophistication. The ability to read is basic, as is a capacity to employ reason or deliberately to seek a state of mindfulness.
Jean Vanier’s life work, however, has been with people for whom such activities are considered to be beyond their capabilities: those with learning difficulties whose behaviour is often challenging and who appear to lack social skills. They are, says Vanier, today’s outcasts.
Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, the community network of homes set up to befriend those who live on the periphery of our complex and demanding world, has called John the Gospel of relationship. After 50 years living with people rejected because of their disabilities, Vanier says the most profound desire he has observed in everyone is to form true relationships, enabling others to discover who they truly are, ‘respected and loved in their deepest person’ (p. 4).
This, Vanier argues in his book The Gospel of John, is the message of John, especially in his words from the prologue that we all have the right to become children of God.
Vanier wrote the book following a visit to the Holy Land, and each section is both rooted in text and place and he returns at every opportunity – and there are many in the Gospel – to his theme. How do we approach those whose lives are broken? He connects the Samaritan woman at the well with Eric, who came to L’Arche with multiple needs, the chief need being to find someone who loved him as he was.
Jesus approaches the woman who is ‘fragile and vulnerable with a broken self-image’ (p. 35), not initially to say I can help you, but by saying will you help me? ‘I am thirsty’. He wishes to enter into a relationship with her, says Vanier, in order to show her that she is valued as a child of God. If Christ is willing to enter into a relationship with those whom society has rejected, to be Christ-like, Vanier says, we must similarly enter into true relationships with those who are likewise discarded, acknowledging at the same time our own weaknesses. He tells of his year with Lucien, a man with a serious catatonic psychosis, who screamed for two hours or more at a time. I felt waves of anger rise up within me, admits Vanier. Later, at the time of Lucien’s death, Vanier viewed his mortal remains. ‘Forgive me, Lucien, you really taught me something important’ (p. 64), what I need to work on in myself.
It is a gentle, challenging book. It is unconfrontational, but nevertheless Vanier asks searching questions by virtue of his own experience. The stories are all very familiar, and yet Vanier manages a subtle twist to each retelling by his juxtaposition of Gospel narrative and events from his own life’s work.
Jean Vanier is a prolific author who wears his wisdom lightly. In Life’s Great Questions, he poses a series of essential questions which he then proceeds to answer in clear, everyday language using stories and characters from his life. The questions are all very familiar, though none the less challenging for that. Examples include ‘Why is there so much suffering?’, ‘What happens when we die?’ ‘Why is there evil in the world?’
Each question of itself could be a writer’s lifetime work. In 17 short chapters Vanier sketches only the briefest of answers covering just one or two aspects of the subject. The sketches, however, are of value for their wealth of personal observations of life and their direct relevance to the harsh reality of life which so many people encounter today. As one would expect, Vanier focuses on poverty, sickness and disability. As well as asking the broad-brush philosophical and ontological questions, he narrows them down. In one chapter, he takes a practical look at the implications of exploring the wider questions, asking ‘How can we be of service to one another and the world?’ Yet he does not conclude that offering simple acts of service is enough, not even a lifetime of selfless dedication. ‘When we begin to love, when we begin to see the beauty of every person, there arises in us a desire to change the world’ (p. 69).
Drawing on his own experience, he draws his book’s answers back to a consistent theme. It is the one theme central to Vanier’s life; his utter conviction of the reality of God’s unconditional love. ‘God hopes, yearns, desires for people to be happy’ (p. 84), he writes before quoting from St John’s Gospel, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son’.