Henri Nouwen's spiritual formation and early influences

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.

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.

Whether or not tomorrow will be different for Peter, Nouwen wrote, would depend on the people he would meet; what he might experience; the desires and ideas which would make sense to him at that particular time. "Nuclear man, like Peter, is not live with an ideology."

He instead is confronted with a myriad of complicated, challenging two years and concerns. In his book that recounts the story of Peter, Nouwen, wrote that when nuclear man does not feel he can relate to the Christian message, he, like Peter, may be prone to be skeptical about the message of Christianity for his life.

The following list depicts the titles of the top ten books Nouwen wrote.

1. The Return of the Prodigal Son

2. Here and Now

3. In the Name of Jesus

4. The Wounded Healer

5. Life of the Beloved

6. The Inner Voice of Love

7. With Burning Hearts

8. Reaching Out

9. Can You Drink the Cup?

10. Bread for the Journey.

Time will determine whether the name of Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen will remain synonymous with the title of the Wounded Healer, or perhaps another title of one of the books he wrote, or as a universalist who espoused the path of mysticism.

Whatever the determination, perhaps those who remember him will also remember that now as then, whether one agrees with Nouwen or not, what is needed even more today in the world, as Nouwen noted are people who do love God and others; people not afraid to build a home amidst acute suffering; people with compassion.

Morse, Kathryn. "Henri J.M. Nouwen and the Return of the Prodigal Son." Newsletter of the National Catholic Ministry to the Bereaved. Volume 17, No. 4, 2008. Available at, ?

http://www.griefwork.org/articles/Journey08Winter.pdf.%20Internet.%2018%20February%202010

LaNoue, Deirdre. The spiritual legacy of Henri Nouwen. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. 2000. p. 5.

Cloud, David. "Henri Nouwen," Available at, http://www.wayoflife.org/files/54e57520d9bdb070befbdd992cbae139-313.html. Internet. Accessed 27 February 2009. ¶ 29.

LaNoue, p. 14.

LaNoue, p. 14.

LaNoue, p. 14.

LaNoue, p. 14.

LaNoue, p. 14.

Morse, p. 1.

O'Laughlin, Michael. Henri Nouwen: His Life and Vision. Maryknoll, New York: Obris Books. 2005.

O'Laughlin, p. 64.

O'Laughlin, p. 65.

O'Laughlin, p. 66.

../../Donna/Documents/Feb/Leroux, Georges. "On the Trail of the Prodigal Son." Queen's Quarterly, Spring 2009, 38+. Database online. Available from Questia, http:/www.questia.com/PM.qst%3fa=o&d=5031276604. Internet. Accessed 18 February 2010"?

Leroux, Georges. "On the Trail of the Prodigal Son." Queen's Quarterly, Spring 2009, 38+. Database online. Available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5031276604. Internet. Accessed 18 February 2010. ¶ 12.

Leroux, ¶ 14.

Cloud, ¶ 13.

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me'.," NKJV.

Cloud, ¶ 3-5.

Richards,%20Anne%20F.%20?Richards, Anne F. "Sexual Misconduct by Clergy in the Episcopal Church." Studies in Gender and Sexuality 5, no. 2, 2004.: 139+. Database online. Available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5035176648. Internet. Accessed 18 February 2010. ¶ 33.

Morse, p. 1.

Morse, p. 4.

Morse, p. 4.

Morse, p. 4.

Morse, p. 3.

Nouwen, Henri J.M. The wounded healer: Ministry in contemporary society. New York, NY: Random House, Inc. 1979.

Morse, p. 4.

"Top Ten Books." Henri Nouwen Society. Avaliable at, ?

http://www.henrinouwen.org/books/topten/

Cloud, ¶ 29.