Henri Nouwen Quotes

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next. ~ Henri Nouwen

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life. ~ Henri Nouwen

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see. ~ Henri Nouwen

When you can look into the face of human beings and you have enough light to recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Up until then it is night and darkness is still with us. Let us pray for the light. It is the peace the world cannot give. ~ Henri Nouwen

Where is peace to be found? The answer is surprising but clear. In weakness. Why there? Because in our weakness, our familiar ways of controlling and manipulating our world are being stripped away, and we are forced to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are most vulnerable, the peace that is not of this world is mysteriously hidden. ~ Henri Nouwen

We can be unhappy about many things, but jy can still be there ... It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy ... It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love. ~ Henri Nouwen

What is important is how well we love. God will make our
love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not. ~ Henri Nouwen

Prayer and action ... can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. ~ Henri Nouwen

As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. ~ Henri Nouwen

The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life. ~ Henri Nouwen

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil. ~ Henri Nouwen

A prayerful life is not a life in which we say many prayers, but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of him who is the origin and purpose of our existence. ~ Henri Nouwen

Joy and laughter are the gifts of living in the presence of God and trusting that tomorrow is not worth worrying about. ~ Henri Nouwen

A happy life is a life for others. ~ Henri Nouwen

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. ~ Henri Nouwen

In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom. ~ Henri Nouwen

Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it. ~ Henri Nouwen

The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others? ~ Henri Nouwen

Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults. ~ Henri Nouwen

Yes, it's a competitive world, but where is your heart? ~ Henri Nouwen

The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us Each time you let the love of God penetrate deeper into your heart it leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give whole-hearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge we can lead a loving life. ~ Henri Nouwen

Silence is a very concrete, practical, and useful discipline in all our ministerial tasks. It can be seen as a portable cell taken with us from the solitary place into the midst of our ministry. Silence is solitude practiced in action. ~ Henri Nouwen

As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through our words. ~ Henri Nouwen

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity. ~ Henri Nouwen

To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age. ~ Henri Nouwen

In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. ~ Henri Nouwen

I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day. ~ Henri Nouwen

The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression. ~ Henri Nouwen

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved. ~ Henri Nouwen

Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you the freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. ~ Henri Nouwen

When we approach fundraising in a spirit of gratitude, our confidence in our mission does not depend on how the person we are with responds to our request! We are free to remain secure in God's love with our hearts set joyfully on the kingdom. ~ Henri Nouwen

Prayer requires that we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing. As disciples, we find not some but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern. ~ Henri Nouwen

The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision. ~ Henri Nouwen

He who thinks that he is finished is finished. How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons. ~ Henri Nouwen

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 ... ~ Henri Nouwen

Jesus invites us to abide in his love. That means to dwell with all that I am in him. It is an invitation to a total belonging, to full intimacy, to an unlimited being-with. The light of the Spirit reveals to us that love conquers all fear. ~ Henri Nouwen

We seldom realize fully that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do. ~ Henri Nouwen

The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness. ~ Henri Nouwen

The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. ~ Henri Nouwen

Ministers are tempted to join the ranks of those who consider it their primary task to keep other people busy ... But our task is the opposite of distraction ... how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence. ~ Henri Nouwen

friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. HENRI NOUWEN ~ Laura Petherbridge

I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. ~ Henri Nouwen

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves. ~ Henri Nouwen

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. ~ Henri Nouwen

Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people. ~ Henri Nouwen

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity ... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue, ... a conversation with God. ~ Henri Nouwen

To be baptized means to make the passage with the people of Israel and with Jesus from slavery to freedom and from death to new life. It is a commitment to a life in and through Jesus. ~ Henri Nouwen

Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world. ~ Henri Nouwen

To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. ~ Henri Nouwen

What is Hope?Hope is that inner dynamic that compels us to explore and pursue the expectations built into the human condition. Hope was born the day the first human beings discovered the first bridge and decided not to jump off the bridge in despair, but to cross it ~ Henri Nouwen

Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed and experienced as a process of growth by which the mystery of life is slowly revealed to us. ~ Henri Nouwen

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. ~ Henri Nouwen

As long as we have our stories there is hope. ~ Henri Nouwen

So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting. ~ Henri Nouwen

To forgive another from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. As long as we do not forgive we pull them with us, or worse, as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies & then define ourselves as being offended & wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God. ~ Henri Nouwen

Gratitude flows from the recognition that who we are and what we have are gifts
to be received and shared. ~ Henri Nouwen

Solitude is an essential element for the spiritual health of a child. If we only stimulate our children - keep them busy with endless stories with no space to be alone - that's not good. ~ Henri Nouwen

Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention. ~ Henri Nouwen

The tragedy of our lives is that, while we suffer from the wounds afflicted on us by those who love us, we cannot avoid wounding those we want to love. ~ Henri Nouwen

This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without condition or limits. ~ Henri Nouwen

When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply. ~ Henri Nouwen

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy. ~ Henri Nouwen

Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. ~ Henri Nouwen

The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be. ~ Henri Nouwen

Indeed, when God's glory dwells in me, there is nothing too far away, nothing too painful, nothing too strange or too familiar that it cannot contain and renew by its touch. Every time I recognize the glory of God in me and give it space to manifest itself to me, all that is human can be brought there and nothing will be the same again. ~ Henri Nouwen

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

When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness. ~ Henri Nouwen

When you are still young and not yet adult, you want to hold everything in your own hands, but if you have your hands open toward prayer, you are able to stretch out your arms and let yourself be led without knowing where. You know only the freedom which God's breath has brought you will lead to new life, even if the cross is the only sign of it you can see. ~ Henri Nouwen

I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart - the Spirit - I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God. ~ Henri Nouwen

A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive. ~ Henri Nouwen

There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal. ~ Henri Nouwen

Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu ... ~ Henri Nouwen

This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people ... and be happy to return home. ~ Henri Nouwen

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. ~ Henri Nouwen

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness. ~ Henri Nouwen

Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place. ~ Henri Nouwen

Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, "This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal." ~ Henri Nouwen

People who pray stand receptive before the world. They no longer grab but caress, they no longer bite but kiss, they no longer examine but admire ~ Henri Nouwen

If you start with community and want to be faithful to community, you have to realize that what binds you together is not mutual compatibility or common tasks, but God. In order to stay in touch with that call to community, we always have to return to solitude. ~ Henri Nouwen

If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning ... and ask yourself whether this situation is truly God given. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. To live a disciplined life is to live in such a way that you want only to be where God is with you. The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you. ~ Henri Nouwen

Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be. ~ Henri Nouwen

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. ~ Henri Nouwen

Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey. ~ Henri Nouwen

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

Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators. ~ Henri Nouwen

We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. ~ Henri Nouwen

It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts.
In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared. ~ Henri Nouwen

Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, 'How can we hide our wounds?' so we don't have to be embarrassed, but 'How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?' When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers. ~ Henri Nouwen

It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends. ~ Henri Nouwen

Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. ~ Henri Nouwen

The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table. ~ Henri Nouwen

The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again. ~ Henri Nouwen

Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others ~ Henri Nouwen

The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world. ~ Henri Nouwen

The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.' They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. ~ Henri Nouwen

Jesus has to be and become ever more the center of my life. It is not enough that Jesus is my teacher, my guide, my source of inspiration. It is not even enough that he is my companion on they journey, my friend and my brother. Jesus must become the heart of my heart, the fire of my life, the love of my soul, the bridegroom of my spirit. He must become my only thought, my only concern, my only desire. ~ Henri Nouwen

Fundraising is a very rich and beautiful activity. It is a confident, joyful and hope-filled expression of ministry. In ministering to each other, each from the riches that he or she possesses, we work together for the full coming of God's Kingdom. ~ Henri Nouwen

Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other's vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of the uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination. ~ Henri Nouwen

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. ~ Henri Nouwen