Henri Nouwen Quotes

We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a singleminded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.

That's prayer to let God's Word speak deep within you and tell you, "You are my beloved. You don't have to take an eye for an eye. No, no you're too rich for that."

There are areas I have to work on. I had some questions and some struggles, but it was an enormously important time for me.

The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? but: Are you in love with Jesus?

I'm learning that the blessing is located in our poor people, in people who are weak; they are the ones we should stay close to, not because they need us but because we need to receive from them the blessing.

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.

It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.

As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved.

What is forgotten cannot be healed, and that which cannot be healed easily becomes the cause of greater evil.

Real greatness is often humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. Some of the greatest works of art and the most important works of peace were created by people who had no need for the limelight. They knew that what they were doing was their call, and they did it with great patience, perseverance, and love.

Real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility.

Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.

That's the temptation of the devil: "Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!"

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.

Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.

You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo, and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.

If you believe you are the beloved of God, you need to spend time listening to his voice - period! You can't say, "Yes God calls me the beloved, but I have to go out to do something now."

Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are.

If you want to know anything about community, you have to realize that the contemplative side is essential. Community without retreating and quiet time never survives.

When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.

The most important thing I've come to believe in is that people with mental handicaps have a unique mission to bring God's blessing to the World.

People have filled an enormously important role in my life - more than books! For me, it's not the formal advising or the therapy that meant so much. It was more the fact that someone committed himself or herself to me. They were really interested in my life; they wanted to know what I was doing; they followed me; they dared to confront and challenge me.

The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds...but how can we put our woundedness in service to others.

One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs.

My writing has developed drastically . The Return of the Prodigal Son is the most important thing I've done, and my most mature book.

The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

The Church is the body of Christ fashioned by baptism & the Eucharist.

Feelings of guilt dominate our work as peacemakers we cannot last long. But when we have opened each other's eyes to the great human gifts among all people we can indeed make peacemaking a way of being.

The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I 'know' God, that is, once I experience God's love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love.

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.

God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?' These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will be many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

We just have to recognize life for what it is: a gift to be grateful for, not a property to cling to, hoard, or defend.

The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear.

Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God's house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.

My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.

Only in the context of the great encounter with Jesus can a real authentic struggle take place. The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after, or beyond the struggle with our false self and its demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us and says, as he said to the old man in the story: ‘As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was beside you.’

Your heart is greater than your wounds.

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something.

Forgiveness indeed heals memories

Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.

Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, "You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it"? That's an important discipline.

Often we come home from a sharing session with a feeling that something precious has been taken away from us or that holy ground has been trodden upon.