26 March 2017 - Jean Vanier - 4th Sunday of Lent - John 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38,

     From the very beginning of today’s Gospel, this story of healing strikes us as being different than other such stories in the Gospels. Usually, we have someone rush up to Jesus with great faith and enthusiasm, pleading to be healed themselves or trying to convince Jesus to help a family member or a friend. However, in today’s Gospel, as Jesus and his disciples pass a blind man on their journey, the disciples ask a question that reflects a widely held belief in the Ancient World: that certainly this man is blind on account of sin – either his sin or the sins of his parents.  Without the blind man even says a word to Jesus, before he knows what is happening, Jesus is spitting on some clay, spreading that mixture on the man’s eyes, and telling him to go wash in the pool of Siloam in order to be healed.  We don’t know how much the blind man knew about Jesus before this encounter, but I ‘m sure this encounter fueled his curiosity.  Jesus uses this healing as an opportunity for God to manifest his saving power to challenge the faith not only of the blind man, but also the faith everyone who witnessed this healing.

     We encounter God in many different ways in our lives.  Jesus reached out to the blind man out of his compassion and mercy.  The holy person we’re talking about today reached out to a group of people who were largely forgotten about and abandoned.  His name is Jean Vanier.  He’s not a canonized saint in our Catholic faith.  He’s still alive, so he cannot be canonized yet.  However, Vanier’s witness of faith speaks out to us today.  He was born into wealth and privilege.  His dad was Georges Vanier, who served as a Canadian diplomat and as the Governor General of Canada, which is the Queen of England’s representative in the Canadian government, a very prestigious post.  Born in 1928, Vanier served in the Royal Air Force as a teenager, later earning a doctorate degree in theology and philosophy in France.  During this time, he visited some psychiatric hospitals and asylums in France, concluding that the patients in these institutions were among the most oppressed and forgotten people in the world. After briefly teaching as a college professor in Canada, he could not forget those images of those special needs adults who were institutionalized in such deplorable living conditions.  Vanier started a group home where he lived with two special needs adults in the small village of Trosly-Breuil, France in 1964, which he named L’Arche, a French word that has two meanings: (1) the Ark, as in Noah’s Ark, a place of refuge; and (2) the arch of a bridge, implying a bridging role for L'Arche to bring people together, connecting both heaven and earth.  When I think about how L’Arche is more than 50 years old today, I cannot imagine how forward thinking and revolutionary this idea was when Vanier started this community in 1964.  In additional, Vanier was instrumental in establishing the organization Faith and Light, a support community for special needs adults, their families and their friends. Today, there are 147 L’Arche communities operating in 35 different countries.  

      Jesus reached out to people who were condemned and ostracized in society, such as the Samaritan woman at the well we heard about last week, or the blind man in today’s Gospel.  These individuals were the weak and the poor, not the rich and the powerful. Yet, just as Jesus saw value and dignity in those who were oppressed by others, Jean Vanier saw great dignity in those special needs adults that he invited to live in the L’Arche communities.  Vanier said: “It is my believe 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.”  That is so different from the way the world looks at things, isn't it?  Vanier sees the weak and the rejected calling us to love, to communion, to compassion, and to community.  Community is an important concept for us in the Catholic Church.  But it is not an ideal place or a perfect place.  According to Vanier, community is a life-giving place, but it is also a place of pain, because it is a place of truth and growth because it is a place where we realize our pride, our fears, and our brokenness. Vanier admits that communion and community did not come easy for him.  He had to change radically to be a part of the L’Arche community he founded.  He says that community helped him see the hardness in his heart, that community taught him and healed him.  Vanier asserts that there is value in being vulnerable, that sharing our weaknesses and our difficulties is more nourishing than sharing our qualities and successes.  

     When I think of the community of saints, I always try to think about how their particular spirituality and their spiritual journey can be applied directly to our own lives.  Vanier, in his spirit of reaching out to others, has always reached out to those of other Christian denominations and other religions.  Often, he has used the foot washing ritual that we use on Holy Thursday as a sign of interdenominational solidarity amongst all Christians.  We invite you all to the remain Lenten Luncheons we have in the ministerial association here in Tupelo at St Luke Methodist and First Presbyterian, and to pray for unity amongst all Christian denominations and greater dialogue, understanding, and cooperation amongst all the religions of the world. As Vanier reached out to those in the margins in his own way, how are we reaching out to those on the margins in society and in our own community?  That is a tough question to answer.  And it is not just donating money to groups that help such individuals.  It is getting involved, forming friendships, and changing perceptions.  Through it all, Vanier looked inside, at his own pain, his own brokenness, at the ways he needed to heal in his life.  Sometimes we are afraid to look at what is going on inside, to be introspective.  Is that something we need to work on in our lives? 
       Remember that the season of Lent is what we make of it.  Our journey of faith is what we make of it.  May Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Therese of Lisieux, Frederic Ozanam and the rest of the community of saints help us and guide us and encourage us on our journey.