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When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.
Henri Nouwen
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Henri Nouwen
Age: 64 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 24
Died: 1996
Died: September 21
Catholic Priest
Presbyter
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen
Become
Search
Life
Despair
Aware
Mobilize
Expression
Expressions
Common
Pains
Hope
Signs
Pain
Transformed
Inspirational
Escape
More quotes by Henri Nouwen
For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can.
Henri Nouwen
If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
Henri Nouwen
Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.
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
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
Henri Nouwen
Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be.
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
There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.
Henri Nouwen
We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
Henri Nouwen
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
Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you but you are children of God.
Henri Nouwen
The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?
Henri Nouwen
A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn't mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God.
Henri Nouwen
Community always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing.
Henri Nouwen
Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.
Henri Nouwen
If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, Love me! and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while, but every moment of life.
Henri Nouwen
The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
Henri Nouwen
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.
Henri Nouwen
The people who most affected me were the ones who got right in there with me, who cried with me, but who also had a certain authority, who dared to say what needed saying.
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
