His teaching is simple,
contained in what he called
the new commandment:
"Love one another as I have loved you."
Love your enemies.
Love those who hate and persecute you.
Love those who have become outcast
and those who are excluded from the group
because they are 'useless', non-productive:
the blind, the lame, the sick,
the poor and the lepers.
Love not just those of your own tribe,
your own class, family or people,
but those who are different,
those who are strangers,
who are strange to your ways,
who come from different cultural and religious tradition,
who seem odd,
those you do not understand.
Love as the Samaritan loved the man he found
beaten up by robber,
somewhere on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
To love is to open our hearts to people
to listen to them,
to appreciate them
and see in them their own unique value,
to wish deeply that they may live and grow.
- Jean Vanier, "The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness"
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