Henri J M Nouwen Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Henri J M Nouwen
Henri J M Nouwen Quotes & Sayings
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Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The Father's love does not force itself on the beloved.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, You are not alone, I am with you. Together
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Emit gratitude as though it was done
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The soul of the artist cannot remain hidden.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
coming home" meant, for me, walking step by step toward the One who awaits me with open arms and wants to hold me in an eternal embrace. I
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation ...
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
I am beginning to experience that an unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate, alert, and attentive love for the neighbor possible.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Whether I am the younger son or the elder son, God's only desire is to bring me home.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy and resentment cannot coexist.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes repentant sinners into his house.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led into places where we would rather not go.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
It is hard for me to imagine what it means to be a complete foreigner, a person to whom no one shows any sign of recognition.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
If God is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionate as well.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
A spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The "distant country" is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus lived this joy of the Father's house to the full.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Thus the authority of compassion is the possibility of man to forgive his brother, because forgiveness is only real for him who has discovered the
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
It was hard for me to see God at work in my life when I was running from class to class and traveling from place to place.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Where does my complete flowering as a human being connect with the needs of the world?
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
God is there. God's light is there. God's forgiveness is there. God's boundless love is there.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Here is a home for you; maybe you need us. All my desires to be useful, successful, and productive revolted.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Our individual as well as communal lives are so deeply molded by our worries about tomorrow that today hardly can be experienced.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus, the Son of God, is the man of sorrows, but also the man of complete joy.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
I witness many signs of hope. I don't have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence
priceless and irreplaceable. — Henri J.M. Nouwen
priceless and irreplaceable. — Henri J.M. Nouwen
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Have courage" therefore means "Let your center speak.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Trust in God allows us to live with active expectation, not cynicism.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
we are usually surrounded by so much inner and outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Today worrying means to be occupied and preoccupied with many things, while at the same time being bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Whatever happens to me in life, I must believe that somewhere, In the mess or madness of it all, There is a sacred potential -
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Whereas discipline without discipleship leads to rigid formalism, discipleship without discipline ends in sentimental romanticism.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Death is not the total dissolution or our identity but the way to its fullest revelation.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a Devine choice.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
In Christ we live as God's beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that. Jean
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus' teaching, it is the very heart of his message.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
When I look through God's eyes at my lost self and discover God's joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life's hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
when God created man and woman in his own image, he saw that "it was very good," and, despite the dark voices, no man or woman can ever change that.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
We want to live as people chosen, blessed, and broken, and thus become food for the world.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
When we face death with hope, we can live life with generosity.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The Christian leader cannot simply be persons who have well informed opinions about the burning issues of our time.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of the compassionate life and the final criterion of being a Christian.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
I now see that the hands that forgive, console, heal, and offer a festive meal must become my own.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
What I do know with unwavering certainty is the heart of the father. It is a heart of limitless mercy.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
God should be sought, but we cannot find God. We can only be found by him.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know that I am moving from fear to love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Prayer, which is breathing with the Spirit of Jesus, leads us to this immense knowledge.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
Spiritual reading, therefore, is slow, deliberate, meditative reading in which we allow the words to penetrate our heart and question our spirit.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
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.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen