Heal the pain before you propose a dream

When the need to be recognized

comes before the desire to change

There are things we understand by reading books about leadership and evangelization. And there are others we learn only when we actually try to propose a path of missionary transformation for the Lord.

So I would like to share with you a lesson that was difficult for me to accept: not everyone who joins a fraternity does so because they want to be transformed.

Some come because they need to be recognized. Others because they long, at last, to be seen. Still others because they are looking for a place where they can feel important, needed, heard, and valued. I am not saying this to judge them!

Over time, I have come to understand that, very often, behind the need to be recognized lies a wound that has never been recognized.

And unless that wound is addressed through genuine inner work in the power of the Holy Spirit, the person will not commit—or will run away before even beginning.

It is precisely this experience that has helped me understand a principle that I consider increasingly important at Emmaus COM, especially during the time of aspirancy, and then when a person becomes a friend, before making the important and demanding commitment to become a disciple:

“Address the pain before proposing a dream!”

1. When my dream is not their dream

When a leader starts a prayer group, he carries a vision within himself.

• He wants to evangelize.

• He wants to form disciples.

• He wants to see people transformed by the Holy Spirit.

He dreams of a fraternal community, of people growing in prayer, in the Word, in the charisms, in service, and in mission.

I too began with this desire. I could see what those people might become.

But over time, I had to understand something very simple: I could see their future, while some of them were still looking for someone who could see their present.

I spoke about mission. They were looking for recognition.

I spoke about service. They needed to feel valued.

I spoke about transformation. Perhaps they were still silently asking: “Will someone finally notice me?”

If a leader fails to understand this difference, sooner or later he risks becoming discouraged.

2. “Why don’t they want to grow?”

It is a question many leaders ask themselves, and one that I too have asked. It can be expressed in this way:

• Why does someone who has received so much not want to go any further?

• Why does someone want to belong to the group, yet resist when you propose a path of transformation?

• Why do they want to be involved, but not corrected?

• Why do they want a role, yet struggle to accept a process?

• Why do they seek closeness to the leader, but not necessarily greater closeness to Christ?

• Why do they suffer when someone else is chosen?

• Why do they interpret an organizational decision as a personal rejection?

The answer is not always ill will.

Sometimes, we are asking for transformation from someone who is still struggling to feel recognized.

And this is where the leader must stop being merely an organizer and become a pastor.

3. Learning to look beyond behavior

A person may appear to be seeking the limelight. But what lies behind it?

They may become jealous when someone else is given a responsibility. But what lies behind it?

They may constantly need the leader’s approval. But what lies behind it?

They may react badly to correction. They may feel forgotten as soon as they are not consulted. They may suffer when they are not mentioned, chosen, thanked, or valued.

At first, it is easy to stop at the behavior.

Then I learned to ask myself another question:

“What pain is trying to speak through this behavior?” This question has changed the way I accompany people.

Because an excessive need for recognition may conceal years in which someone did not feel seen.

The constant search for approval may conceal deep insecurity.

The need to occupy a place may arise from the fear of having no value.

Even certain power struggles within our Christian communities may conceal a far more basic question…

4. “Do I matter to anyone?”

This question is often left unspoken, but we must learn to recognize all the paraverbal and nonverbal signs that express it so clearly.

The person does not tell you: “I am afraid that I matter to no one.” In fact, I have even met people who say they have worked on this issue and completed a healing journey, yet they continue to seek constant reassurance. They want to know whether you thought about them, whether you chose them, whether you noticed what they did, and whether their place is still secure. Above all, they want no fraternal correction that might improve the mission.

When the reassurance they expect does not come, a crisis may arise. A responsibility entrusted to someone else is experienced as exclusion. A correction becomes: “You no longer value me.” A change in the organization becomes: “You no longer need me.” The leader’s silence or absence becomes: “I no longer matter.”

Even the success of a brother or sister may be perceived as a threat: “If they grow, what place will be left for me?”

In my experience, I have come to understand that these reactions do not always arise from conscious pride or a desire for prominence. Sometimes they reveal a much older question: “If no one sees me, do I still exist for anyone?”

This is where discernment becomes essential. Beware of two opposite mistakes.

The first is to judge the person immediately: “They are self-centered; they always want to be at the center.”

The second is to continually satisfy their need for recognition, giving them ever more space, responsibility, and reassurance in order to prevent them from suffering.

Neither path truly heals.

The first wounds them further. The second creates dependency and wounds them indirectly.

The Gospel way is different: to acknowledge the wound without consecrating it as an identity, while opening oneself to the truth in Christ Jesus!

Through my words, and above all through the way I accompany someone, I can say: “Yes, you matter. But not because you have a role or a list of tasks. Not because you are indispensable. Not because you are close to the leader. Not because everyone recognizes what you do. You matter because you are a son, because you are a daughter, because the Father knows you by name.” Jesus himself says:

“Even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Mt 10:30–31)

This is the profound transformation I desire for the people the Lord entrusts to me: not that they should always have someone watching them, but that they should discover the gaze of God the Father, before whom they no longer need to beg for their identity.

When this truth begins to descend into the heart, something changes:

• I no longer need to be indispensable in order to know that I have value.

• I do not need to be chosen every time.

• I can rejoice when someone else is chosen.

• I can serve even when no one thanks me.

• I can leave a responsibility without thinking that I have lost my place in God’s heart.

• I can even decrease so that Christ may increase.

This is where the need for recognition begins to be transformed into freedom—the fundamental freedom that makes it possible to commit oneself and embrace the missionary dream.

5. Jesus saw beyond behavior

In the Gospel, Jesus possesses this extraordinary ability: he sees beyond what people do and reaches what they are living through.

Zacchaeus is a tax collector. The crowd sees the sinner. Jesus sees the man. And he says to him:

“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” (Luk 19:5)

Even before his conversion, Zacchaeus experiences something astonishing: Jesus knows his name. He is seen. He is recognized. He is called. And that encounter produces what no moral pressure had been able to achieve:

“Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.” (Luk 19:8)

The encounter comes first. Then comes the transformation. Jesus does not approve of everything Zacchaeus has done, but neither does he begin by condemning him. Everything begins with a relationship that remains free and without sabotage. This is why Jesus went to eat in Zacchaeus’s house, where no one else would have entered for fear of becoming unclean.

Jesus is able to build a relationship without gossip, sabotage, or slander!

When a relationship remains free, it bears the fruits of freedom and prepares a person for responsibility!

6. Recognizing the wound does not mean feeding the desire for prominence

When you understand that a person needs recognition, you may fall into a trap: constantly giving them recognition so that they will not suffer.

But this does not necessarily heal them. It may even make them dependent.

If a person constantly needs to be chosen, praised, consulted, reassured, or placed at the center in order to feel loved, always giving them what they ask for may temporarily soothe the pain without healing its root.

The leader’s role is not to become the source of another person’s identity. That source is God the Father.

This is why accompaniment means progressively helping the person move:

• from the need to be seen by others to the discovery that they are seen by God;

• from the need to be indispensable to the freedom to serve;

• from the desire to occupy a place to the joy of belonging;

• from the search for approval to the discovery of their identity as a son or daughter of God.

This is the basic transformation and equipping needed by a missionary disciple.

7. The fraternity cannot become a stage

A Christian group can unconsciously become a place in which everyone seeks their own space for visibility:

• The person who wants to be considered the most spiritual.

• The person who always wants to have a prophetic word.

• The person who wants to remain close to the leader.

• The person who seeks a position of responsibility.

• The person who wants to be recognized for what they have done.

• The person who suffers when someone else is given more space.

• The person who serves enthusiastically as long as they are seen, but withdraws when no one seems to notice their service.

These are human dynamics! And precisely because they are human, they can also enter our prayer groups. But a Christian community cannot be built on the distribution of visibility. The community must become the place where we gradually learn that we do not need a stage in order to know who we are.

Saint John the Baptist gives us one of the most liberating statements for every ministry:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

This word does not erase the person. It sets them free. Because when I know who I am before God, I no longer need to fight constantly so that others will notice me.

8. My discouragement became a lesson

There have been times when I asked myself:

• Why is it so difficult to build?

• Why, after investing so much in people, do misunderstandings, sensitivities, expectations, and disappointments emerge?

• Why does someone to whom you have given space seem to suffer when that space changes?

• Why do some people seem enthusiastic as long as they feel recognized, but become critical when they no longer do?

• Why can fraternal correction be experienced as a lack of love?

At such times, it is easy to become discouraged. Or to conclude: “It is no longer worth investing in people.” But these responses are not the response of the Gospel.

This is why I believe I was inspired to learn a third way: to discern the pain without becoming a prisoner of another person’s pain:

• I can understand your wound without allowing your wound to govern the fraternity.

• I can acknowledge your need without automatically turning it into a mission.

• I can love you without necessarily entrusting you with the responsibility you desire.

• I can listen to your suffering while also asking you to mature.

• I can welcome you without confirming every one of your expectations.

For me, this has become a very concrete form of charity in truth.

9. Not everyone who arrives is already a missionary disciple

When someone joins a prayer group, we must not expect them already to possess the motivations of a disciple who is humanly and spiritually mature, whatever their self-awareness or perception of their own journey may be.

They may come because they are suffering. Because they are lonely. Because they need friendship. Because they are seeking healing. Because they long to belong. Because they are going through a crisis. Or even because they want to be recognized. That is all right.

That may be the entrance door. But it cannot become the destination. Father Émilien Tardif used to say:

“What matters is not why people come to our groups, but how they return home after their experience!”

Jesus welcomes people where they are, but he does not necessarily leave them where they are.

Authentic evangelization says: “You may enter with your need. But allow Christ gradually to transform that need as well.”

10. Do not immediately propose your dream

We leaders often have a vision. And it is a grace.

We see a fraternity. We see the mission. We see evangelizers. We see ministries. We see people capable of carrying the Gospel far and wide.

But we can make the mistake of falling so deeply in love with our vision that we no longer see the real people God has entrusted to us:

• We want missionaries. God sends us wounded people.

• We want evangelizers. People seeking consolation arrive.

• We want servants. People longing to be recognized arrive.

• We want people who are ready to give. People who still need to receive arrive.

And perhaps we become irritated because God did not send us the people we had imagined.

But perhaps that is precisely where our mission begins. Our task is not to find people who are already prepared to make our dream come true.

Our task is to love, accompany, form, discern, and allow the Holy Spirit to transform real people into disciples!

11. First the pain, then the dream

This is why, today, I repeat to myself and to other leaders: Address the pain before proposing a dream! Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say to her sisters:

“You cannot give the Gospel to someone who is hungry; so put it between two slices of bread.”

Of course, we cannot “resolve” every pain. We are not therapists. We are not saviors. The Savior is Jesus.

At Emmaus COM, the disciples know well that they must beware of the Karpman drama triangle.

1. The Victim: the person who feels persecuted.

2. The Rescuer: the person who comes to help and appears to have the other’s interests at heart.

3. The Persecutor (or oppressor): the person who targets the future victim.

At times, it is difficult to escape these roles within a relationship of accompaniment.

The Karpman drama triangle therefore offers each person a kind of solution intended to satisfy their needs or expectations.

With sound discernment, and by avoiding the automatic adoption of a role within this triangle, we become more clear-sighted.

We can learn not to propose immediately what we want people to become without first trying to understand what they are living through.

Before asking, “How can I involve this person?”, perhaps I should ask myself, “Where are they hurting?”

Before asking, “What service could they offer?”, I might ask, “Where does their need to be recognized come from?”

Before saying, “I need you for this mission,” perhaps I should help them discover: “God loves you even when no one needs you.”

Because service cannot be born from the need to prove one’s worth.

It must be born from the experience of already being loved.

12. From “LOOK AT ME” to “WHOM CAN I LOVE?”

At first, a person arrives saying, even without words: “Look at me.” Then they encounter Christ. They discover a gaze they do not have to earn. They discover that they are known and loved. And slowly, the question changes.

No longer: “Who sees me?”, but: “Whom can I see?”

No longer: “Who recognizes what I do?”, but: “Whom can I serve?”

No longer: “What place will I have?”, but: “Lord, where do you want to send me?”

This is where the disciple is born.

This is where the missionary is born.

Conclusion

Mission begins with a transformed gaze

On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus meets two disappointed men who are walking in the wrong direction. Before correcting them, he draws near and walks with them. He listens to them. He allows their words to emerge:

“But we had hoped…” (Luk 24:21)

Only then does he open the Scriptures to them, lead them further, and transform their sad and unbelieving gaze into one that is burning and filled with enthusiasm.

This reminds me that we are not called merely to grow projects, but to accompany real people.

The decisive question then becomes: “Am I helping this person discover that they are seen and loved by God?”

Emmaus teaches us that the Risen Lord does not force hearts: he walks with them and makes them burn once again.

And when those disciples recognize Jesus, they set out and prepare the way for Pentecost.

No longer merely needing to be seen, they become capable of being witnesses.

Everything can be summed up here: we are not called to sell dreams, but to prepare hearts that can finally dream with God.

We cannot change people.

But we can love them, accompany them, and remain beside them while God transforms them.

And so a person who once asked only to be seen may one day lift their eyes and begin to see others.