Quotes from Henri J.M. Nouwen

One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text: a psalm or a prayer, for instance. The Hindu spiritual writer Eknath Easwaran showed me the great value of learning a sacred text by heart and repeating it slowly in the mind, word by word, sentence by sentence. In this way, listening to the voice of love becomes not just a passive waiting, but an active attentiveness to the voice that speaks to us through the words of the Scriptures.

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion.

When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of these others. When I succeed, I worry that others will be jealous or resentful of me. I become suspicious or defensive and increasingly afraid that I won't get what I so much desire or will lose what I already have. Caught

This is the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. There is no journey to God outside of the journey that Jesus made. Since his Son had become all in all, He has brought them all back. Rembrandt's painting is the whole of humanity returning to God, the summary of the history of our salvation.

A lot of giving and receiving has a violent quality, because the givers and receivers act more out of need than out of trust. What looks like generosity is actually manipulation, and what looks like love is really a cry for affection or support.

Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken with Jesus as our friend and finest guide.

When we accept our complete belovedness, we stop judging ourselves and other people; as a result, other people begin to feel safe with us. When we open the hospitality of our hearts to the Spirit, the Spirit frees us to extend hospitality to our fellow humans and all God's creation. The Spirit's hospitality becomes ours, and we experience the alignment of our will with God's will—a traditional definition of successful discernment.

Thomas Merton wrote, "The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.

As the Beloved ones, our greatest fulfilment lies in becoming bread for the world. That is the most intimate expression of our deepest desire to give ourselves to each other

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

Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.

Both were lost children. Judas, no longer able to hold on to the truth that he remained God's child, hung himself. In terms of the prodigal son, he sold the sword of his sonship. Peter, in the midst of his despair, claimed it and returned with many tears. Judas chose death. Peter chose life. I realize that this choice is always before me.

God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a "first" love, an unlimited, unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself.

One of the greatest acts of faith is to believe that the few years we live on this earth are like a little seed planted in a very rich soil. For this seed to bear fruit, it must die. We often see or feel only the dying, but the harvest will be abundant even when we ourselves are not the harvesters.

Jesus, the man of sorrows, and we, the people of sorrow, hang there between heaven and earth, crying out, "God, our God, why have you forsaken us?

No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or in captivity, if you will be honored or despised, if you will have many friends or few, if you will be liked or rejected. But when you hold lightly these dreams and fears, you can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God's love for humankind.

In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.

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.

The spirit of love, once freed from our mortal bodies, will blow where it will, even when few will hear its coming and going.

Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness.

when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and are touched by him in the center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can

Act ahead of your feelings and trust that one day your feelings will match your convictions. Choose now and continue to choose this incredible truth.

Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.