Henri Nouwen

HENRI NOUWEN

Nouwen taught at Notre Dame University and later, at Harvard Divinity School..

He gave up his teaching job and began to live at L’Arche Daybreak community, Ontario, Canada.In the first few years there, he worked caring for Adam, a handicapped person.

Nouwen is the author of several works on minstry and spirituality. His last book was on Adam, seeing in Adam’s life, the passion , death and suffering of Jesus Christ. His work on Dying and Caring (Our Greatest Gift) was published in 1994.

He died of a hear attack on Sept.21,’96.

Cardinal Bernardin makes a very poignant reference to Nouwen in his book , The Gift of Peace: “When Fr. Nouwen died, every one was shocked…Yet there is no doubt that he was prepared. He spent a life time teaching others how to live,and how to die.”

Prayer and mediation form the core of his message.He emphasizes the need for compassion in our lives.He reminds every one that we are all people carrying our wounds in our own personal lives.We don’t have to appear to be supernatural or unhuman. Sharing our wounds( experiences)will make us more sensitive to the wounds of other people and help them to cross over their selfishness to the radiance of Christ.He wants all ministers to be bridges over which people may walk to reach Jesus.

CREATIVE MINISTRY

Nouwen mentions in the Introduction to this work that his main concern is to discuss the relationship “between professionalism and spirituality in the ministry.”

“Ministry and spirituality never can be separated. Ministry is not an eight to five job but primarily a way of life.”

Prayer is not a preparation for work…prayer is life; prayer and ministry are the same and can never be divorced.”

Teaching, Preaching, Individual Pastoral Care, Organizing and Celebrating are the titles of different sections in this book.

Teaching:

Christians considered “teaching one of their primary tasks because of their conviction that increasing insight in man and his world is the way to new freedom and new ways of life.”

Teaching as practiced in our Universities and Schools is a violent process and it is competitive, unilateral (teacher to student), and alienating (not dealing with real life.)

Teaching should become a redemptive process. It is possible “only through a teacher who can lead us to the source of an existence by showing us who we are now and thereby what we are to do

PREACHING:

Two main reasons why a preacher often creates more antagonism than sympathy are 1) the assumption of non-existent feelings 2) the preoccupation with a theological point of view.

Dialogue and availability are needed on the part of the preacher to relate to people

Dialogue: It is not a technique but an attitude of the preacher who is willing to enter into a relationship in which partners can really influence each other.

Availability: In order to be available to others, a man has to be available to himself. It is putting one’s full range of life and experiences at the disposal of others. Offering your life –experience to your fellowman –to lay yourself down like a bridge over troubled water.

Every time real preaching occurs, the crucifixion is realized again: for no preacher can bring any one to the light without having entered the darkness of the cross himself.

Individual Pastoral Care:

The minister who cares for people is called to be skillful, but not a handyman, knowledgeable but not an impostor, a professional, but not a manipulator.

REACHING OUT

This book is Nouwen’s response to the question: What does it mean to live a life in the spirit of Jesus Christ?

Spiritual life is reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human beings and to our God.”

We are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our god.

Spiritual life is that constant movement between the poles of loneliness and solitude, hostility and hospitality, illusion and prayer.

Reaching Out to Our innermost self:

Loneliness is one of the most universal human experiences.

When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships, and suffocating embraces. To wait for moments or places where no pain exists, no separation is felt…is waiting for a dream world.

When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community.

What should we do with our loneliness? What does it mean that neither love nor marriage can take the loneliness away?

Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to turn it into a fruitful solitude.

Movement from loneliness to solitude is the beginning of spiritual life.

Solitude that really counts is the solitude of the heart. A lonely person has neither inner time nor inner rest to wait and listen. He wants answers and he wants them here and now. In solitude we can pay attention to our inner self.

Nouwen quotes Merton: “It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers.”

Nouwen suggests an attitude of hospitality to counteract the feelings of hostility that grow within us.

“In a world so pervaded with competition, even those who are very close to each other, such as classmates, teammates. colleagues in work , can become so infected by fear and hostility when they experience each other as a threat to their intellectual or professional safety.

Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.

As parents and children, teachers and students, healers and patients, we all reach out to each other in different ways. But in all these relationships, the concept of hospitality can help us to see that we are called not to own but to serve each other and to create the space where that is possible.

While the movement from loneliness to solitude makes us reach out to our innermost self, the movement from hostility to hospitality makes us reach out to others.

PRAYER

All the great saints in history …say that we have to pray. Libraries have been written about the question of how to pray.

One school of prayer or tradition is Hesychasm (from the Gk. word hesychia—repose).

Hesychasm is a spiritual tradition that found its beginnings in the 5^th C., developed in the monasteries on Mount Sinai and later on Mount Athos, was found very much alive during the spiritual renewal in the 19^th C. Russia.Their emphasis was on Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Have mercy upon me.”

The remarkable story of a Russian peasant praying the Jesus Prayer is described in the book “The Way of a Pilgrim.”The peasant says in the book: “I gave up saying the prayer with my lips. I simply listened carefully to what my heart was saying. Then I felt something like a pain in my heart, and in my thoughts so great a love for Jesus Christ that I pictured myself throwing myself at His feet.”

The prayer of the heart gives the pilgrim an immense joy and an unspeakable experience of God’s presence.

The prayer of the heart can be a special guide to the present day Christian searching for his own personal way to an intimate relationship to God.

We do not want to escape this world. We want to be fully part of it without drowning in its stormy waters.

The prayer of the heart shows us one possible way. The Jesus Prayer, or any other prayer is meant to be a help to gently empty our minds from all that is not God.Our prayer becomes a prayer of the heart when we have localized in the center of our inner being the empty space in which our God-filled mind can descend and vanish, and where the distinctions between thinking and feeling, knowing and experiencing, ideas and emotions are transcended, and where God can become our heart.

HERE AND NOW: LIVING IN THE SPIRIT

We must learn to live each day, each hour, years, and each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity, to make everything new. (Send the past away)

It is hard to live in the present. The past and the future keep harassing us. The past with guilt, the future with worries.

So many things have happened in our lives about which we feel uneasy, regretful. These keep us feeling guilty about the past.

(Our worry about the future) can fill our mind that we become blind to the flowers in the garden, and the smiling children on the streets, or deaf to the grateful voice of a friend. Most of us think of God as a fearful, punitive authority. Jesus’ core message was that God is neither a powerless weakling nor a powerful boss, but a lover whose only desire is to give us what our hearts most desire.

We can use the Lord’s prayer, the Jesus Prayer, the name of Jesus, or any word that reminds us of God’s love and put it in the center of our inner room, like a candle in a dark place.

God is not a private God.The God who dwells in our sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each being. As we recognize God’s presence in our hearts, we can also recognize that presence in the hearts of others. When I pray, I enter into the depths of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love.

Mother Teresa’s advice to Nouwen: “Well, when you spend one hour a day adoring your Lord and never do anything which you know is wrong…you ‘ll be fine.”

Nouwen used to repeat the words “The Lord is my shepherd.”

The deeper these words enter into the center of my being, the more I become part of God’s people and the better I understand what it means to be in the world without being of it.

Reflection on the passages of the Gospel:

It was not that the Gospel proved useful for my many worries but that the gospel proved the uselessness of my worries and so refocused my whole attention.

Jesus wants to set us free, free from everything that prevents us from fully following our vocation, free also from everyone who prevents us from fully knowing God’s unconditional love. To come to that freedom we have to keep leaving our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters and dare to follow him…. even there where we rather would not go.

Once we are able to forgive, we can be grateful for what we have received so much. We can walk, talk, smile… work, sing, give joy, give hope, and give love. We are alive.

Two of the most important ways of leaving father, mother, brother, and sister are forgiveness and gratitude.

The great mystery of leaving father and mother is that their limited love will multiply and manifest itself wherever we go, because only in so far as we leave, can the love we clung to reveal its true source.

Marriage is a spiritual reality. That is to say, a man and a woman come together for life, not just because they experience deep love for each other, but because they believe that god loves each other with an infinite love and has called them to each other to be living witnesses of that love.

OUR GREATEST GIFT

(A Meditation on Dying and Caring)

Old men and women must prepare for death. For me, the first task is to become a child again.

When we know that God holds us safely we don’t have to fear anything or anyone but can walk through life with great confidence.

It is the freedom rooted in being a child of God.

When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die…death will be unable to take our freedom.

A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity. If we live toward death as toward an event that separates us from people, death cannot be other than a sad and sorrowful event.

But if we grow in awareness that our mortality, more than anything else will lead us into solidarity with others, then death can become a celebration of our unity with the human race. Instead of separating us from others, death can unite us with others. Some of us die earlier, others later. But all of us die and participate in the same end. This communion with the whole human family takes the sting out of dying and points us far beyond the limits of our chronology.

We die poor. There is a blessing hidden in the poverty of dying. It is the blessing that makes us brothers and sisters in the same kingdom.

In fact, Jesus’ way of dying offers us a hopeful example. We, too, can say to our friends, “It is for your own good that I am dying.”

But where we listen deeply to Jesus’ words, we realize that we are called to live like him, to die like him, and to rise like him.

Not only the death of Jesus, but our death too, is destined to be good for others. It is meant to bear fruit in other people’s lives.

The great mystery is that all people who have lived with and in the spirit of God participate through their deaths in the sending of the Spirit.

In this way, dying becomes the way to everlasting fruitfulness. Our death may be the end of our success, our productivity, and our fame…but it is not the end of our fruitfulness.

The beauty of life is that it bears fruit long after life itself has come to an end (John 12:24)

In every respect, Jesus’ life was a failure. Still, few lives have been so fruitful.

The real question before our death, is not how much can I still accomplish…but how can I live so that I can continue to be fruitful. Our doing brings success, but our being bears fruit.

My death will indeed be a rebirth. Something new will come to be, something about which I cannot say or think much. It is something that will last and carry on from generation to generation. In this way, I becom