Jean Vanier was born in
Switzerland on September 10, 1928 to Canadian parents. His father functioned as a military advisor
to his nation’s delegation to the United Nations stationed in Geneva. Vanier’s maternal grandmother‘s ancestors
had emigrated to North America in the 1730’s.
Therese de Salaberry Archer was an intensely religious woman. Vanier’s maternal grandfather moved to the
city of Quebec at the age of 42. The
two were married and had one child, Pauline, who was a nurse during World War
I. Pauline Archer met Georges Philias
Vanier in Montreal. Georges Vanier was a
lawyer by profession who had fought in World War I; while in the midst of
battle, he was grievously wounded in the right leg. As a consequence of this injury, his leg was
amputated. Upon his discharge from
service, he returned to Canada and subsequently met Pauline. They were married in 1921
Vanier had four other
siblings. Their family was deeply devout
Catholics. His father served as the
Canadian minister to France (1940-1941) at the time of the Nazi invasion and
takeover of that country. He was able to
flee to the U.K. and eventually returned to Canada.
As a very young man,
Vanier decided he wanted to join the Navy to help in the war effort. He asked his Dad for permission and got it;
after joining, he was dispatched to England.
He lived there from 1942-1950.
Vanier was educated at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. As a young man, Vanier experienced the
horrors of war directly and was deeply impacted by that experience. France was eventually liberated by the Allied
Forces in 1944 and Georges Vanier returned to his diplomatic post, stationed in
Paris.
In retrospect, Vanier
described his experience in the navy in the following way, “When I was in the
navy, I was taught to give orders to others.
That came quite naturally to me!
All my life I had been taught to climb the ladder, to seek promotion, to
compete, to be the best, to win prizes.
That is what society teaches us.
In doing so, we lose community and communion.”
Vanier witnessed the
liberation of the Jews from Nazi concentration camps – Dachau, Buchenwald and
Ravensbrook. He saw first-hand the
extent of the horror, the anguish, the pain and the fear experienced by those
Jews who had survived the Holocaust. He
also was personally devastated by the news of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki and its horrific aftermath.
In speaking of these events Vanier said, “A few months after the
liberation of Paris, I accompanied my mother, who was in the Canadian Red
Cross, to the Gare d’Orsay in Paris – the train station where hundreds of men
and women arrived like skeletons in their striped blue and white uniforms, from
Dachau, Bukenwald, Ravensbrook, and other concentration camps. We became very conscious of the capacity of
humanity to destroy itself.”
Deeply troubled by these
experiences, Vanier began to formulate and refine his thinking. He was also profoundly affected by Thomas
Merton’s book entitled, Seven Story
Mountain (published in 1941). Within
this autobiography, Merton refers to the two weeks he volunteered at Friendship
House in Harlem, New York. Friendship
House was a Catholic interracial center that served the poor, homeless,
unemployed and addicted members of the local community.
Friendship House was
originally founded by a Catholic social reform advocate, Catherine de Hueck
Doherty in the 1930s in Toronto Canada.
Friendship Houses were subsequently setup in other Canadian cities,
including Ottawa. Doherty’s views
regarding racial equality were viewed unfavorably by certain members of the
Church leadership, however, and the establishment was closed in Toronto in
1936. She was eventually asked to open
one in Harlem in 1938. Vanier was so
impressed by this idea of community that he visited Harlem’s Friendship House
and was deeply moved by the experience reinforcing in his own mind the value of
community; an idea that would grow and
eventually find significant expression.
Vanier underwent a
personal transformation that would lead him to embark on a thirty day retreat in
which he followed the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius - a collection of
meditations, prayers, and practices developed by St. Ignatius Loyola to assist
individuals in their pursuit of a relationship with their God. Following this retreat, he made a monumental
decision – he resigned his Navy position in 1950 and his life took on a
spiritual direction .
His mother, Pauline,
introduced him to her spiritual mentor – A Dominican priest, Father Thomas. This relationship between Vanier and Father
Thomas would assist Vanier in shaping what would ultimately become his life’s
work.
In regards to his
mentor, Father Thomas founded a community he called, Eau Vive in 1947. This community was designed as a place where
students of philosophy and theology could pursue their academic careers while
living in a community based on love, reconciliation and good works. It was an austere community to which all were
welcomed regardless of ethnicity or religious belief. Vanier’s stay at Eau Vive had a profound
effect upon him. Father Thomas was
ultimately removed from his position by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church on
the grounds that his beliefs and methods were considered unorthodox.
In pursuit of a new
direction, Vanier decided to work towards a doctoral degree. He was so influenced by the works of the
famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle that he entitled his doctoral thesis, Happiness as Principle and End of
Aristotelian Ethics. Vanier felt
that Aristotle’s ethics were based on the innate human desire for a fullness of
life. It was Aristotle who said,
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly
because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have
acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act
but a habit.”
Armed with his doctoral
degree, he began teaching at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto
in January of 1964. However, he could
not forget the suggestion made by Father Thomas that he could do something
meaningful to help alleviate the suffering of the afflicted. He also remembered the misery and pain he had
witnessed in post-war France. As Vanier
saw it, his life could be seen as consisting of three distinct phases. According to him, “…Then during the third
phase, I discovered people who were weak, people with mental handicaps. I was moved by the vast world of poverty,
weakness, and fragility that I encountered in hospitals, institutions, and
asylums for people with mental handicaps.
I moved from the world of theories and ideas about human beings in order
to discover what is really meant to be human, to be a man or women. “
From the time Vanier resigned his position in
the military and his promising career in 1950 to the 1964, he spent a great
deal of time immersed in studies and contemplation. The culmination of this hiatus led him to
concentrate his energies and efforts upon being of service to the poor. On August 5, 1964, Vanier founded the L’Arche
Community and was joined by Raphael Simi, Philippe Seux and a man called Dany -
these were gentlemen who had severe mental disabilities and who had been
previously housed in a mental institution. The original lodgings were so small and so
austere that there was no toilet – merely a bucket – and the accommodations
lacked electricity. Since its simple
beginnings, the L’Arche Community is a live in institution whose purpose is the
care and rehabilitation of the mentally disabled. During the first months of residing in L’Arche,
Vanier was deeply moved by the lives of these individuals deeply perturbed by
the internal chaos that is the hallmark of mental illness – “I sensed how their
hearts had been broken by rejection, abandonment, and lack of respect. At the same time, I was beginning to discover
some of the beauty and tenderness of their hearts, their capacity for communion
and tenderness. I was beginning to sense
how living with them could transform me, not through awakening and developing
my qualities of leadership and intelligence, but by awakening the qualities of
the heart, the child within me.”
By the end of the year,
he had an opportunity to move into a bigger house; he was asked, in fact, to
become director of the mental institution at Val Fleuri after the staff had
resigned. In March of 1965, the
transition was completed. Suddenly,
thirty-two additional disturbed individuals joined what was previously a small
quiet community. Word of his work grew
and with encouragement from such renowned individuals as Mother Theresa, the number
of L’Arche Communities subsequently expanded around the world; now there are
approximately 150. Vanier is currently
involved in speaking engagements describing the nature of his work and has
written numerous books, including Becoming
Human and Befriending the Stranger in
which he clarifies and expands upon his fundamental message of caring and
compassion for those in need.
In spite of the fact
that the scientific disciplines of Neurobiology and Neuroscience have elucidated
many of the biological and biochemical mechanisms that are responsible for the galaxy
of symptoms that are collectively regarded as mental illness, there remains a
great deal of suspicion and the resulting stigma that is associated with those
who are afflicted by mental illness. Like
Dorothea Dix who preceded him, Vanier is determined to look upon those
suffering from disease originating within the human brain as worthy of respect,
compassion and caring. For this reason,
he has done a great service to humanity.
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