Pretending You Are Strong

The poor and the weak have revealed to me the great secret of Jesus.

If you wish to follow him you must not try to climb the ladder of success and power, becoming more and more important.

Instead, you must walk down the ladder, to meet and walk with people who are broken and in pain. The light is there, shining in the darkness, in the darkness of their poverty.

The poor with whom you are called to share your life are perhaps the sick and the old; people out of work, young people caught up in the world of drugs, people angry because they were terribly hurt when they were young, people with disabilities or sick with AIDS, or just out of prison; people in slums or squats, people in far-off lands where there is much hunger and suffering, people who are oppressed because of the colour of their skin, people who are lonely in over crowded cities, people in pain.

Do not turn aside from your own pain, your anguish and brokenness, your loneliness and emptiness, by pretending you are strong.

Go down the ladder of your own being until you discover, like a seed buried in the broken, ploughed earth of your own vulnerability, the presence of Jesus, the light shining in the darkness.

Jean Vanier

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