Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.
Jean VanierRead
We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True love empowers others rather than diminishes their self-worth.
This quote emphasizes that love should be about enhancing the dignity and capabilities of others rather than overshadowing them. It suggests that when you genuinely love someone, you help them recognize and develop their potential, allowing their own light to shine rather than suppressing it through dependency or control.
Themes
LoveEmpowermentCapacitySupportRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a wedding speech to emphasize the supportive nature of love.
More from Jean Vanier
All quotes βOne of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.
Jean VanierRead
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.
Jean VanierRead
In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
Jean VanierRead
We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
Jean VanierRead
When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration.
Jean VanierRead
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Pale sunlight, pale the wall. Love moves away. The light changes I need more grace than I thought.
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If a person claims that he really loves someone, evidence is asked from him. And that evidence is the giving away of possessions, the granting of favors. Just as when Mevlana claimed that he loved me, when I came he granted me thousands of favors and protected me. I regard these all as a grace from God.
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I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.
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If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.
Mother TeresaRead
If you are silent, be silent out of love. If you speak, speak out of love.
Saint AugustineRead
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.
Napoleon BonaparteRead