Nouwen's Sabbatical Journey

A Democratic senator was pondering how to influence people the most – as a politician who is able to introduce laws that can help millions of people, or as a minister who continues to offer hope and consolation to people in their daily struggle? For me it is not a question of how we can most influence others. What matters is our vocation. To what or whom are we called? When we make the effect of our work the criterion of our sense of self, we end up very vulnerable. Both the political and the ministerial life can be responses to a call. Both too can be ways to acquire power. The final issue is not the result of our work but the obedience to God’s will, as long as we realize that God’s will is the expression of God’s love.~ Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey

Life is ‘a little while’, a short moment of waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything, and will offer us a new heaven and a new earth, makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people speak of it whenever they smile; the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when they offer us light and beauty; and all of history speaks of it when amidst all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them. What is my main task during my ‘little while’? I want to point to the sings of the Kingdom to come, to speak about the first rays of the day of God. I do not want to complain about this passing world but to focus on the eternal that lights up in the midst of the temporal. I yearn to create space where it can be seen and celebrated. ~ Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey

In his life Henri lived close to those who suffered and he accompanied many people as they prepared to die. What then can be said of the death of our friend and teacher? Though not the one he was expecting, Henri’s heart attack was indeed a gift that helped him to make a passage. It is amazing grace that Henri died in his homeland close to family and a couple of close friends. The presence of these people, many faxes, and several phone calls reminded him of how deeply he was loved. Although he was fully expecting to live for many more years, Henri was not afraid to die. He had many struggles and had shared them openly with his friends and through his numerous writings. But this I know: Henri died at peace with himself, his family, his own faith community of L’Arche, his friends, his vocation as a priest, and the God whose everlasting love has been Henri’s beacon for sixty-four years. ~ Nathan Ball, Afterword to Sabbatical Journey

I have never met Henri Nouwen personally. Neither does he know me. But reading the closing words of Nathan Ball at the end of Nouwen’s diary, I felt as if I had lost a close friend. Indeed, after reading so many of his books, including two personal diaries, I feel so connected to Henri in ways that I cannot fully understand. It is a relationship between an author who wrote so transparently and intimately, with a reader among millions of others who felt deeply about what he wrote. It feels as if I’ve been with Nouwen through all his journeys in L’Arche as well as all over the world. One moment he is so alive and passionate. In the next chapter, someone else is writing about his death. It feels so awkward. Yet, it becomes so enriching when I reflect on it… a man who was faithful till the end. Neither of us met each other before, yet I consider Henri Nouwen a friend on my journey in life, for he shared his life with me and I am changed because of it.