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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

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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
Really
Finally
Would
Known
Knowledge
Jesus
Spirit
Come
Heart
Believe
Reveals

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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I loved to teach, I loved my students, but I wanted to find a community. I prayed: Lord, show me where you want me to go. I will go wanted wherever you call me - but please be clear.
Henri Nouwen
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Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
Henri Nouwen
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Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Henri Nouwen
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All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.
Henri Nouwen
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The pain that comes from deep love makes your love more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root.
Henri Nouwen
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Our glory is hidden in our pain, if we allow God to bring the gift of himself in our experience of it.
Henri Nouwen
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The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
Henri Nouwen
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Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.
Henri Nouwen
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...the word that seems best to summarize the desire of the human heart is 'communion.' ...wherever we look it is communion that we seek.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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How do you pray? Take the gospel of each day and spend ten minutes with it. Read it, and read it again. Walk into the world with the gospel in your heart.
Henri Nouwen
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Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint.
Henri Nouwen
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What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
Henri Nouwen
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The 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...that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen
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when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.
Henri Nouwen
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In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.
Henri Nouwen
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Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
Henri Nouwen