Henri Nouwen Quotes

A sincere seeker knows what his goal is: the highest Truth. He will not delay his journey. In spiritual life, we aspire for the highest Truth, for God, nothing else.

The great call for the Church is to not just be concerned about right or wrong behavior, which is moral life, but about communion with God, which is mystical life.

Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him.

There is no sweeter manner of living in the world than continuous communion with God.

The first step to eternal life is you have to die.

In this world of ours, every believer must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying ferment for the mass; and it will be that all the more as, in the depths of his being, he lives in communion with God.

What is of the nature of spirit and soul must be gleaned from facts belonging to the spirit and soul; we shall then know that in the living thinking which is liberated from the will, a life-germ has been discerned which passes through the gate of death, goes through the spiritual world after death, and afterwards returns again to earthly life.

The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art, and science follow, one and all, this aim.

In ancient, prehistoric times, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible, but today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they no longer exist where we can see them with our physical eyes. Yet spiritually they are still present everywhere, and whoever seeks can find them.

My main goal is still for the books to minister in some way, to teach a spiritual truth, to enlighten people.

I wanted to be baptized as an adult, confirming my faith and my beliefs. It was also a way for me to consciously thank God and Jesus for everything in my life.

A lot of people can talk about their faith. When you live it every day and act on the word of God, it's pretty cool to see.

I think I was about seven years old, and I remember I was at Moffat Road Baptist Church, where I grew up with all my friends and family and probably didn't understand nearly enough, but I knew enough to understand I wanted to be saved and wanted Jesus to be Lord of my life. What an awesome experience.

Receiving the Eucharist means adoring Him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with Him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself.

To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.

Having found in many books different methods of going to GOD, and divers practices of the spiritual life, I thought this would serve rather to puzzle me than facilitate what I sought after, which was nothing but how to become wholly GOD'S. This made me resolve to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to GOD, that He might take away my sin, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world.

Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness.

The first link between my soul and Christ is not my goodness but my badness, not my merit but my misery, not my riches but my need.

In other words, first we must call people to communion with God, to intimacy with God, to a sense of belonging. Most people are lost, confused, alienated. They suffer and struggle immensely in relationships. We have to proclaim loudly and clearly in our actions and in our words that God loves us that we belong to him. That's a call to the mystical life.

One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.

A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins.

As soon as we become one with the ocean in the shape of God, there is no more rest for us, nor indeed do we need rest any longer.

God can use the fear that grips the hearts of men today to point them to eternal truths- the truth of God's eternal judgment, and the truth of His eternal love.

Our chaotic, confused world has no greater need than to hear the message of good news - the Gospel of Jesus Christ.