Jean Vanier: Logician of the Heart (People of God)

Winner of the 2015 Templeton Prize and numerous other international and prestigious honors, Jean Vanier lives a radical poverty of surrender in a time of fanatical acquisitiveness, economic disparity, and mounting bellicosity among nations. He is a philosopher of the heart, icon of wholeness, and justice activist. Through such key notions as trust, community, relationship, and humility, Vanier has built up a network of service and nurturing growth spanning the globe: the L'Arche Movement. He has advocated for peace in a world that treasures its violence, written extensively about the very meaning of human personhood, and championed sensitivity to the diverse spiritual traditions that make up our world. His remarkable life has included rich friendships with Blessed Mother Teresa, St. John Paul II and Henri Nouwen. Jean Vanier is a man of complexity and formal philosophical training, a scion of a family of national pedigree, and one of the seminal religious and inspirational figures of our time. In this volume, Michael Higgins focuses on Vanier’s many interconnections—personal and conceptual—with the mighty and the humble, the pious and the secular, as well as the young and the seasoned. People of God is a series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men has known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.