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Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking he's always doing something.

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
Prayer
Firsts
First
Something
Always
Openness
Speaking
Listening

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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The most important thing I've come to believe in is that people with mental handicaps have a unique mission to bring God's blessing to the World.
Henri Nouwen
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When you have loved deeply, that love can grow even stronger after the death of the person you love. That is the core message of Jesus.
Henri Nouwen
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Ministry in no way is a privilege...it is the core of the Christian life. No Christian is a Christian without being a minister.
Henri Nouwen
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We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
Henri Nouwen
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You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.
Henri Nouwen
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Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
Henri Nouwen
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A happy life is a life for others.
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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Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.
Henri Nouwen
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God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
Henri Nouwen
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Mysticism is for all, not just for a few special people.
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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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
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When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.
Henri Nouwen
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When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself All is lost. I have to start all over again. This is not true. What you have gained you have gained....When you return to the the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you starte
Henri Nouwen
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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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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
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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