I'm Human

Jean Vanier, the founder of l’Arche writes:

Our brokenness is the wound through which the full power of God can penetrate our being and transfigure us in him.

What is it in these turning points or experiences of fracture or conditions of brokenness that particularly open us to God’s love dwelling and working in us?

When we break the communion wafer we break it significantly into two. But then we go on breaking it into smaller pieces; fragments on a silver paten. It would take some time to put the jigsaw of these fragments back together again. The point is we don’t. Christ isn’t put back together again. And when we are broken neither are we. We can never be the same again. Christ was broken. For us. For all time. And in his actions he took bread and he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said take, eat, this is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me.

Being broken is what makes us. It makes us a community, diverse fragments of Christ’s body together making something whole. Expressed by the words we use in Lent at the Eucharist ‘We break this bread, communion in Christ’s body once broken’.

It is in our being broken, by life, sometimes by God that new understanding comes. Not a brokenness to be repaired or stuck back together but broken for life, for beauty, for being in the world as his people, like the fragile clay pots, filled with his love. At our weakest, most open to receive the greatest love; his life laid down for us. Because in weakness we know that.

When we are not - he is He is the yes, when all around are saying no He is the hope when all feels hopeless He is the life when everything speaks of death He is the wholeness when everything speaks of brokenness.