Mercy Within Mercy: Georges and Pauline Vanier and the Search for God.

Foreword by Sister Wendy Beckett

I can well remember as a young nun, reading that the new Governor General of Canada, Georges Vanier, was a Catholic, a devout practicing Catholic, as was his beautiful wife, Pauline. The half was not told. To be a ‘practicing Catholic’, even a devout one, may only mean that one goes to Mass on Sundays, keeps the law of the Church, supports the parish and is generous to the poor; is in other words, a good person. But all of this can be relatively superficial. To be truly a Catholic is to surrender to Our Blessed Lord with complete love – to want only Him, to live, as St Paul says, ‘in Christ’. Although I was happy in 1959 to know that the Vaniers were good Catholics, I cannot express the joy with which I learn now that they were real Catholics. They both lived always in the presence of God.

Moreover, it seems to have been a perfect marriage, each supporting the other and bringing the other to a fullness of life that might not otherwise have been possible. They were very different in temperament and in background. Georges was a stern man of duty, Pauline a charming but anxious extrovert. He gave her strength through his unshakable love; he believed she was necessary to him in his diplomatic work. It was her warmth and sweetness, her open-armed approach to people that drew him out of an introverted loneliness. Pauline, on the other hand, for all the joy that she gave those who knew her, was always racked by a sense of failure and inadequacy. Only in Georges’s love and confidence, his palpable need of her, could she feel affirmed and free. Perhaps the loveliest evidence of the closeness of this marriage is the way Pauline brought Georges to a deeper understanding of the fatherhood of God. Stern and unyielding in virtue, he had been raised in a Jansenistic tradition of human sinfulness. He did not dare to go to Holy Communion more than once or twice a year. He saw God as the Supreme Judge and shrank in awe before Him. To his astonishment, Pauline went joyfully to Holy Communion every day, sometimes after a night of champagne gaiety. She had no doubts about God’s tenderness and his longing to keep her holy through his love and his sacraments. It was only after seventeen years of marriage that she persuaded him to come with her to listen to a priest she thought spoke with power the message of God. Rather reluctantly Georges came and was bowled over by the discovery of the depth of God’s love. So they complemented one another here too: her calling to prayerfulness balanced and reinforced by his calling to duty; and his awe of God set in the context of divine love.

I knew nothing of the deep spiritual life of the Vaniers, but I can remember noting that there were two extraordinary contemporary apostles, Jean Vanier and his sister Thérèse, who had the same surname. I did not then know that they were son and daughter of the Governor-General Vaniers, but it did strike me as both unusual and wonderful that two such God-driven people should come from the same family. What were their parents like, I wondered. Up till now the most striking example of saintly parents producing saintly children had been the Martin family in nineteenth- century France. All five daughters became nuns, one of whom is now known as St Thérèse of Lisieux. Modern attention is being directed to her father and mother, showing how the shy and anxious Zélie Martin (rather like Pauline Vanier in fact) who died young and heroically and her gentle, unobtrusive husband, who gave up his watch-making shop so as to give all his time to his daughters, deserve concentrated study. It was from them Thérèse learned to be a saint. This seems to be equally true for the Vaniers. Jean Vanier has given his life to L’Arche, a community that devotes itself to offering self-supporting homes to people with mental disabilities. It is an extraordinary work of charity. Thérèse Vanier gave up a prestigious profession as a haematologist to work with these same ‘least of the brethren’, those the world ignores and rejects. The Vaniers, like Jesus, cherish and respect those whom society would cast aside. Surely, one thinks, such a passion for the poor of Christ must have been learnt in the home.

This moving book shows that it was indeed learnt in the home. Georges and Pauline spent at least half an hour in prayer together every evening. They tried to be totally aware of God’s presence. Anybody who has taught in schools knows the sorrow of finding children who know nothing of God or even of morality. Inevitably, it turns out that they have parents who do not know God either. Somewhere the rot must stop, and it can only be by teaching young people the truth about God and preparing them to have true marriages with homes in which the importance of love and truth and responsibility are fully accepted. There is very much about which we need to pray here, but such a book as this gives one great hope.

Sister Wendy Beckett

April 2015

Mercy Within Mercy: Georges and Pauline Vanier and the Search for God by Mary Frances Coady is published this week on June 25 and will be available in paperback and eBook.