Only when we recognize the rich network of connections between the Eucharist and our life in the world can the Eucharist be worldly and our life Eucharistic.
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are
Nouwen’s wisdom is a fusion of the psychological and the spiritual.
Long before you, mother, or I was born, the death of Christ was celebrated in the Eucharist. And it will be celebrated long after we have died. During our few years of conscious participation in the E...
Letters of friends are good to receive, but we should be able to live happily without them. Visits are gifts to be valued, but without them we should not fall into the temptation of a brooding mood. P...
Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, though the light has come into the world, people have preferred darkness to the light (John 3:19). In me I can feel this strange preference for the darkness. It seems as if I...
Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart.
Here the mystery of drinking the cup becomes clear. The coming and leaving of friends, the experiences of love and betrayal, of care and indifference, of generosity and stinginess can become the way t...
God is there. God’s light is there. God’s forgiveness is there. God’s boundless love is there.
God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people’s response to your experience of ab...
Christian leaders are called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be se...
By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.
But God has called you to speak the Word to the world and to speak it fearlessly. While acknowledging your woundedness, do not let go of the truth that lives in you and demands to be spoken.
Boredom, resentment, and depression are all sentiments of disconnectedness. They present life to us as a broken connection. They give us a sense of not-belonging. In interpersonal relations, this disc...
Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.
Now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my...
Death is not the total dissolution or our identity but the way to its fullest revelation.
A much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence.