The story of Father Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996)

Henri Josef Machiel Nouwen was born January 23, 1932, in Nijkerk, The Netherlands. His parents were Maria Nouwen-Ramselaar and Laurent Nouwen. His mother was a woman of religious devotion and aesthetic sensibility. His father on the other hand, was an ambitious tax lawyer, not capable of praise and admiration.

Henri was deeply hurt when after his mother’s death in 1978, Nouwen wrote "In Memoriam" on her life and received no response when he sent it to his father. Only later in both of their lives did Henri and his father begin to understand each other as driven men striving for things that would not ultimately satisfy. Henri’s father was 94 when he heard of his son’s untimely death, and he wrote, "I was proud of Henri’s success. When he left Holland to go to the States he had nothing — no money, no relations, nothing. When he had money, he gave it away. He was a very devoted son but also very human. I miss him a lot. He was always writing and visiting. He had much of his mother in him, eager, always working."

As a child, Henri often asked his parents if they loved him. He wanted the assurance that he was loved by family, friends, and ultimately by God. Henri’s father expected that his son achieve and lead, and Henri did. He became a tenured professor at Yale and Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. He wrote more than 40 books on the spiritual life that continue to be best-sellers, and he achieved these successes in English, his second language. But his heart seemed to be ever restless as he moved from university to university. He spent time in silence in a Trappist monastery as he sought his true vocation. He went to South America and confronted poverty among the poorest, and then returned again to university life. Nothing seemed to satisfy his searching heart. Yet each "interruption" as he called these changes, invited him to look in a new way at his identity before God. Each interruption took something away from Henri, and each offered him something new. He knew that God was asking for his whole heart and every part of it.

Eventually the great professor-writer found a home in Daybreak, a L’Arche community that gives a home to people with mental disabilities in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Here he matured from a Dutch Catholic priest devoted to Jesus and activist academic into the pastor of an ecumenical, interfaith community who found God was most available in the weak. Henri had found his true home.

Henri discovered the tenderness of God’s embrace as he knelt before Rembrandt’s famous painting, "The Return of the Prodigal Son". Henri was no longer the wandering prodigal or resentful older brother. Instead, his final calling was to become like the welcoming father: one who would offer a hospitable heart and open embrace to others who had wandered long and far in search of a place to call home. Henri made his home, his community, with the handicapped.

One of Henri’s assignments at L’Aeche was to care for 25-year-old Adam, a man who was terribly handicapped. Henri had to bathe him, prepare meals and feed him, clothe him, accompany him to the bathroom, brush his teeth, take him wherever he needed to go, and put him to bed. And yet so severe were Adam’s handicaps that he could not respond; he could not express his thanks to Henri in any way. Henri’s life could have become humdrum, but in speaking of this time he said, "The handicapped can bring me in touch and close to that place in me where I am like them, weak, broken, and totally dependent. It is the place of true poverty where God calls and says to me, ‘Don’t be afraid; You are my beloved child, on whom my favor rests’."

Henri, the celibate priest, was forced by the discipline of community life to become a loving father figure who tenderly cared for the intimate needs of one with great physical weaknesses. He said that Adam reflected for him not only his person but also the heart of the universe and indeed the heart of God. "Adam came into my life and by his life and heart he announced to me and summarized all I have ever learned." Henri had indeed answered God’s call to "go and live among the poor in spirit and find healing." He spoke of Adam as the one who more than anyone had connected him to God.