Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you’d rather not go.
HENRI NOUWENWe are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
-
-
Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
HENRI NOUWEN -
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Your heart is greater than your wounds.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.
HENRI NOUWEN -
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Our life is a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing that is a friend who cares.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
HENRI NOUWEN -
We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.
HENRI NOUWEN -
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
HENRI NOUWEN -
For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.
HENRI NOUWEN -
If you feel loved, you can do a thousand things. If you feel rejected, everything becomes a problem.
HENRI NOUWEN