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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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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
Always
Ministry
Calls
Solitude
Essential
Essentials
Elements
Community
Back
Witnessing

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.
Henri Nouwen
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Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the answers.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.
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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When I could no longer cling to my normal supports I discovered that true support and real safety lie far beyond the structures of our world.
Henri Nouwen
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Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.
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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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
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Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God's people.
Henri Nouwen
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Is my growing old making me any closer to Christ? Am I only getting older or am I getting more godly?
Henri Nouwen
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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
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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
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I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.
Henri Nouwen