Henri Nouwen's spiritual theology and pastoral writings

Henri Nouwen

"…Compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there"

Henri Nouwen

Life

In time, the name of Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen became synonymous with the title of one of the best known books he wrote, the Wounded Healer . Some religiously followed his teachings and considered Nouwen as a spiritual guide, while others have strived to expose him as a universalist who espoused the path of mysticism.

Born January 24, 1932 in Nijkerk, a small village approximately 28 miles southeast of the Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Nouwen taught at Notre dame in 1966 and began teaching at Yale Divinity School in 1971. "He was not Protestant and he was not 'old school.' He was a psychologist as well as a Dutch Roman Catholic Priest,"

LaNoue wrote. He was also reportedly committed to a number of Vatican II initiated.

From the time Nouwen was a small boy, Deirdre LaNoue recounted in the book, the spiritual legacy of Henri Nouwen, two themes characterized Nouwen' life. "First, from the time he was a baby he longed for affection, constantly reaching out to be held, to be loved. Second, he never wanted to be anything other than a priest. God was very important to him and this never changed."

Nouwen's mother and grandmother nurtured Nouwen's love for God. Sarah de Munk Ramselaar, Nouwen's grandmother, encouraged his interest in the priesthood. She hired a carpenter to build a child-size altar for Nouwen and also contracted a seamstress to make the priestly vestments. La Noue reported:

By the time he was eight Henry had converted the attic of the family home into a children's chapel where he pretended to home as, Dave Sermons to friends and relatives, in designated a whole hierarchy of Bishops, priests, deacons, an altar servers among his friends and siblings. But most important, his grandmother, to use Nouwen's own words, "helped to introduce him to read to a life of prayer and encourage them in a personal relationship with Jesus."

Nouwen's father encouraged him to become independent in competitive. He told Nouwen, "show me that you can make it in the world… Show me that you can accomplish something."

Nouwen's father reportedly influenced him most during the first 30 years of his adult life. After his ordination, however, the messages his mother had related to him reportedly influenced him even more.

While growing up, Nouwen's mother stressed the value of both education and religion. Nouwen attended mass each morning. He served in the Catholic church as an altar boy. He invested much time in studying. Nouwen's family prayed together frequently; "not only because it was a time of war [during German occupation of World War II], but because they were very devout in their Catholic faith. They prayed the rosary at night and listened to sermons on the radio."

Nouwen's father also talked him to appreciate various aspects of culture by hosting poetry readings and our discussions.

Even during the German occupation of Nouwen's country during World War II, he described his formative childhood years as well as his home as being safe and sheltered. He remembered this time as "a time in which all the boundaries with clear." Due to the training he received from in his family while growing up, when Nouwen became an adult, along with having a strong faith, and the he possessed an appreciation for beauty and a passion for learning. On July 21, 1957, on a Sunday, Nouwen realized his childhood dream when the Dutch Roman Catholic Priest ordained him as a priest.

In the article, "Henri J.M. Nouwen and the Return of the Prodigal Son," Kathryn Morse Texas Tech University, reported that Nouwen, the oldest child in his family, wrote hundreds of books and papers, which Protestants and Catholics read. "The Yale University Library, Divinity School Special Collections has over 82 boxes of Nouwen's writing. More than 90 L'Arche communities throughout the world provide a home for persons with mental handicaps."

Nouwen wrote about "brokenness" and how he perceived that this positioned one to receive instead of giving. He was reporedly fluent in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish. His books, published in more than 22 languages, have sold over two million copies.

Work

After reading Nouwen's first book, Intimacy, the dean at Yale Divinity School invited Nouwen to speak at Yale. Later, while in Holland, while still teaching at Notre Dame, Nouwen received an offer to teach at Yale. At that time he declined; preferring to remain in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, Yale repeated its offer for Nouwen to join the divinity school faculty. When Yale agreed to Nouwen's terms, which allocated time for him to complete projects in Holland and exempted him from producing technical works of scholarship as other faculty member, Nouwen accepted Yale's offer.

Yale and he decided to join the divinity school faculty. He was to be the psychological half of a two person team working in the field of pastoral ministry. However, in the end of this arrangement or division of labor never came to pass. Much as had happened when he was recruited to join the psychology department at Norte Dame, once Henri arrived at Yale, he found his interest in representing the psychological approach to be waning further and being replaced by a strong desire to weave personal spirituality back into pastoral ministry. Indeed, by this point spirituality had become his primary focus.

At Yale, where Nouwen celebrated mass in the school's basement chapel, he gained popularity as a professor and as a "spiritual" writer. He "taught classes on ministry to prisoners and to the elderly, on ministry in secular institutions, on discipleship, on the relationship of ministry and spirituality, on the ministry of Vincent Van Gogh, on prayer, and on Thomas Merton."

Despite reported success in teaching and filling the position of a de facto chaplain to students attending Yale and others in the community, Nouwen felt restless. He reported feeling ungrounded and experiencing increasingly hollow inside. Knowing that his own spirit was broken, Nouwen felt he should be closer to God; that he should be doing more than he was doing at that time. He continually searched for something new, trying to find fulfillment with a "new" person, "new" interest or a "new" activity.

As Nouwen drew upon religion, psychoanalysis and art history in his life, he regularly reflected on wrongdoing and forgiveness. In 1983, he "discovered Rembrandt's the Return of the Prodigal Son, a painting that absorbed his thoughts for several years; his own print being a part of the rest of his life."

Nouwen felt this artistic masterpiece could not be understood without referring to the account of the prodigal son portrayed in the biblical narrative.

Nouwen's personal trajectory provided the seed for many of his writings. "In the notebooks and diaries he always kept, & #8230; Nouwen distinguishes himself from most other [contemporary] Christian spiritual masters… through one decisive trait: He never hides his own fragility, and his relation to the biblical text is thereby deeply altered."

Nouwen insisted that it was necessary to connect with other; to show affection. At times, some, according to Leroux, compared Nouwen to Thomas Merton. "Nouwen, like Thomas Merton and many other Catholic contemplatives, combined the teaching of eastern gurus with ancient Catholic practices. In his book Pray to Live Nouwen relates approvingly Merton's heavy involvement with Hindu monks."

From his involvement with mysticism, Nouwen embraced a form of universalism and panentheism, a belief that God is in all things. Nouwen, like Thomas Merton, believed and taught, contrary to what Jesus taught about Him being the only way to God; recorded in John 14:6.

Nouwen taught that instead of Jesus being the only way; that a number of paths provide the way to God.

Cloud argued:

Nouwen did not instruct his readers that one must be born again through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ in order to commune with God. The book With Open Hands, for example, instructs readers to open themselves up to God and surrender to the flow of life, believing that God loves them unconditionally and is leading them. This is blind faith. Nouwen wrote:

"When we pray, we are standing with our hands open to the world. We know that God will become known to us in the nature around us, in people we meet, and in situations we run into. We trust that the world holds God's secret within and we expect that secret to be shown to us" (With Open Hands, 2006, p. 47).

Nouwen did not instruct his readers to beware of false spirits and to test everything by the Scriptures. He taught them, rather, to trust that God is leading in and through all things and that they should "test" things by their own "vision." He denied the biblical teaching that man is a fallen creature with a darkened heart that can only be enlightened through the new birth.

In the article, "Sexual Misconduct by Clergy in the Episcopal Church," Anne F. Richards, Reverend, former member of the senior staff of the Episcopal Bishop, also expressed concerns regarding Nouwen. Richards questioned whether Nouwen as the "wounded healer" encouraged "a kind of displayed vulnerability and a disincentive to growth that does not serve the priest or the church well."

In the final years of his life, Nouwen, admitted publically that he was a homosexual and "ministered" to others, not out of his strengths, but out of his own wounds.

Writing

In the essay, he co-authored with Donald P. McNeill and Douglas a. Morrison, Compassion: A Reflection on Christian Life, Nouwen wrote that compassionate people go directly to those who are suffering most and lives with them there. Compassion, Nouwen stressed, does not comprise a "bending toward the under privileged from a privileged position; & #8230;not a reaching out from on high to those… less fortunate below; & #8230; not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull."

Compassion builds a home, as noted in the quote introducing this paper, to serve where it can best help those who are hurting.

In his book the Return of the Prodigal Son, a Story of Homecoming, Nouwen recorded his personal reflections on the Rembrandt painting of: "The Return of: The Prodigal Son," and his personal life. Nouwen's reflections on the painting include "the characters, the painter and the scriptures. Nouwen observed that Rembrandt's painting strays from what we have all imagined the scene to be from the scripture reading."

Nouwen proposed that those who read the biblical account of the prodigal son likely picture a large estate or farm; with the father running down the road to meet his returning prodigal son as he approaches home.

Later, according the understanding most have of the account of the prodigal son, the father also greets the older son outside the home, as he came in from working in the fields. Rembrandt painted each person depicted in this story inside the father's house. He portrays the two sons in the same scene simultaneously. Nouwen encouraged his readers to study of the people portrayed in this poignant scene. Faithful to the scriptural account in a spiritual sense: "The father, while not running down the road, is certainly full of a very tender love for his younger son. And the younger son is very much heartbroken at his circumstances and humbles himself kneeling."

Although the older son is not presented outside in Rembrandt's painting, Rembrandt portrayed this son scarcely entering into the circle of light. Although present, the older son remains aloof; choosing not to participate in welcoming his once wayward, now repentant brother home.

Nouwen wrote that the prodigal son began his journey leading to his downfall by rejecting his father's values. Eventually, this younger son experiences rejection by those around him after he spent all his money. The prodigal son experienced total rejection when "employed" to feed hogs and no one even offered him any of the food the pigs had to eat. Those all around the prodigal son did not acknowledge that he, like them, had a real human need for sustenance. They failed to recognize him as being, like them, a real person. When the son became so hungry that he saw the pig's food as desirable, he came to the realization that he, like the people who did not recognize his needs as a human, was not a pig, but a human. He remembered that he was a son; that he had a father who loved him. When the son decided he would return home, he did not expect his father to totally forgive him. He had, like others who may not recognize they, as the prodigal son, have also thrown away their Heavenly Father's values; insulting Him; choosing to go astray. In his book about the prodigal son, Nouwen translated Matthew 18:3: "Unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Nouwen reminds readers that: "The younger son turned toward home only hoping to participate outside his father's home as a laborer, but found himself restored to complete sonship, a picture of being "re-born" into the Kingdom."

Nouwen encourages readers to study Rembrandt's painting; to meditate on it and then imagine themselves as the one returning to the Father.

The younger son made a change and the older son was asked to do so. Nouwen wrote: "People who have come to know God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself…." They move into the light of the Father.

The painting questioned…[Nouwen]. Who are you? Which of the figures do you identify with? His first thoughts were that he did not know what it was like to be the prodigal son, to be held and loved, to rest his head on the Father. He was one of the onlookers. Nouwen wrote, "For years I had instructed students on the different aspects of the spiritual life.…but had I, myself, really ever dared to step into the center, kneel down, and let myself be held by a forgiving God?"

The Return of the Prodigal Son, a Story of Homecoming, as well as numerous other of Nouwen's books, reportedly inspire others with Nouwen's inclusions of his personal confessions. His self-questioning lead others to question themselves.

Wounded Healer

Nouwen projected himself as a model of the priest as a person, who although "wounded" ministered to other hurting individuals out of his personal wounds. In the book, the wounded healer: Ministry in contemporary society, Nouwen wrote about Peter, a man who entered into his life who, by his outward appearance and behavior as well as his words, dramatically intimated the condition of modern man. Although Peter approached him for help, Nouwen wrote, at the same time Peter offered him a fresh understanding of his own world.

Peter, at twenty-six years old, with a frail, fragile body, lived a life with a fast-shifting value system. At one time, he had been a strict and obedient seminarian who attended daily Mass and participated in hours of community prayers. Peter had been active in the church, Neouwen wrote. He was enthusiastic theological matters. After he decided to leave the seminary, however, and started to study at a secular university, he quickly forsook the values and practices of his former way of life. Instead of attending church services, Peter spent many nights drinking with other student. He moved in with a girl friend and started to study subjects foreign to his former theological interests. Peter appeared to have forgotten his faith as he seldom spoke about God or religion.