Henri Nouwen
Henri Nouwen
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen,was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Over the course of his life, Nouwen was heavily influenced by the work of Anton Boisen, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Jean Vanier...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth24 January 1932
spiritual joy darkness
Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.
fruit god-love intimate
The more we touch the intimate love of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that love.
christian prayer heart
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
two may fruit
The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results.
prayer heart ideas
The crisis of our prayer life is that our minds may be filled with ideas of God while our hearts remain far from him.
giving description gods-love
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.
spiritual solitude impossible
Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. ...We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.
spiritual character journey
I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding...
love teaching journey
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
land house leaving
[Praying] demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh.
giving-up healing grace
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 single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. Solitude is a place where Christ remodels us in his own image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world.
spiritual journey spiritual-journey
Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.
heart two tasks
His (Christ's) appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.
discovery painful theological
Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.