St. Theresa's Prayer

May there be peace within you today. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into our bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of you.

An Eye-Opening Encounter

When I think of the essence of [the Christian witness], I always think of the blind man that Jesus healed by covering his eyes with mud and telling him to go wash in the pool of Siloam (John 9:1-34). When the religious leaders got wind of it, they started to question the man extensively - wanting to know who healed him, how it happened, where the man who healed him was now, and even asking his parents to verify whether their son was in fact born blind. When they came back to the man and pressed him with questions a second time, accusing Jesus of being a sinner for doing work on the Sabbath, the man replied, "I don't know whether He is a sinner... But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see" (John 9:25 NLT)!
That's the essence of the message: "I was blind, and now I can see; I was lost and now I am found; I was guilty and now I'm forgiven; I was alone and now I have a friend." It doesn't take a perfect life to spread that message - just someone who has had an eye-opening encounter with the living Christ. Regardless of intellect, position, status or wealth, the message for everyone will come down to this: "I was blind, and now I can see."

- John Fischer

Energizing Visions

Are the great visions of the ultimate peace among all people and the ultimate harmony of all creation just utopian fairy tales? No, they are not! They correspond to the deepest longings of the human heart and point to the truth waiting to be revealed beyond all lies and deceptions. These visions nurture our souls and strengthen our hearts. They offer us hope when we are close to despair, courage when we are tempted to give up on life, and trust when suspicion seems the more logical attitude. Without these visions our deepest aspirations, which give us the energy to overcome great obstacles and painful setbacks, will be dulled and our lives will become flat, boring, and finally destructive. Our visions enable us to live the full life.

- Henri Nouwen

A New Heaven and a New Earth

Long before Jesus was born the prophet Isaiah had a vision of Christ's great unifying work of salvation. Many years after Jesus died, John, the beloved disciple, had another but similar vision: He saw a new heaven and a new earth. All of creation had been transformed, dressed with immortality to be the perfect bride of Christ. In John's vision the risen Christ speaks from his throne, saying: "Look, I am making the whole of creation new. .... Look, here God lives among human beings. He will make his home among them; they will be his people, and he will be their God, God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness or pain. The world of the past has gone" (Revelation 21:5; 21:3-4).
Both Isaiah and John open our eyes to the all-inclusive nature of Christ's saving work.

- Henri Nouwen

The Peaceable Kingdom

All of creation belongs together in the arms of its Creator. The final vision is that not only will all men and women recognise that they are brothers and sisters called to live in unity but all members of God's creation will come together in complete harmony. Jesus the Christ came to realise that vision. Long before he was born, the prophet Isaiah saw it:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the panther lie down with the kid,
calf, lion and fat-stock beast together,
with a little boy to lead them.
The cow and the bear will graze,
their young will lie down together.
The lion will eat hay like the ox.
The infant will play over the den of the adder;
the baby will put his hand into the viper's lair.
No hurt, no harm will be done
on all my holy mountain,
for the country will be full of knowledge of Yahweh
as the waters cover the sea.
(Isaiah 11:6-9)

We must keep this vision alive.

- Henri Nouwen

Sarah, Aged Seven

In the days shortly before her death, she would lie curled up in a chair, half-dozing, half-watching us as we lived out our lives around her. Smiling, she would say, "I'm so happy, I feel I've got arms tight round me." Her death was the most exciting moment of my life. Deep in the almost overwhelming pain and grief of her going I was still conscious of a great joy and triumph; joy that she had not been destroyed by her suffering, that she was still confident and reassured; joy that we were able to hand her back into and on to the greatest Love of all; joy that this was not really the end. I felt a very real sense of a new birth - more painful but as exciting as her first one seven years earlier. There was an inexplicable but unshakable knowledge that all was indeed well.

- Jane Davies in "The Price of Loving"

Being Sisters and Brothers of Nature

When we think of oceans and mountains, forests and deserts, trees, plants and animals, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the galaxies, as God's creation, waiting eagerly to be "brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God" (Roman 8:21), we can only stand in awe of God's majesty and God's all-embracing plan of salvation. It is not just we, human beings, who wait for salvation in the midst of our suffering; all of creation groans and moans with us longing to reach its full freedom.
In this way we are indeed brothers and sisters not only of all other men and women in the world but also of all that surrounds us. Yes, we have to love the fields full of wheat, the snowcapped mountains, the roaring seas, the wild and tame animals, the huge redwoods, and the little daisies. Everything in creation belongs, with us, to the large family of God.

- Henri Nouwen

Winter In My Soul

The centre does not hold. Nothing holds... It is winter in my soul. I thirst.
"As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42:1-2)
Well before dawn I rise and enter the darkened chapel. On the north wall, a reminder of the Roman Catholic origins of this ecumenical centre, is a gold tabernacle in which the sacrament is reserved. A flickering votive candle marks the presence. I settle myself on a nest of pillows gathered near the tabernacle on the north wall and wait.
In the solemn dark neither the spider-like limbs of trees outside nor the Advent creche inside are yet visible. The unseen cradle remains empty, a place hollowed out where God's thirst for us and our thirst for God might meet. It is quiet. The ceramic stone fountain has been left unplugged during the night. Only a faint honking, a reminder that the geese phalanx is continuing south, breaks the deep silence. Only that and the sound of my soul panting at the edge of the stream.

- Wendy M. Wright in "Weavings", July/August 2000

The Renewal of the Whole Creation

Our final homecoming involves not just ourselves and our fellow human beings but all of creation. The full freedom of the children of God is to be shared by the whole earth, and our complete renewal in the resurrection includes the renewal of the universe. That is the great vision of God's redeeming work through Christ.
Paul sees the whole created order as a woman groaning in labour, waiting eagerly to give birth to a new life. He writes: "It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it - with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21). All that God has created will be lifted up into God's glory.

- Henri Nouwen

Dead or Alive?

The Jesuitisms of clergymen and devout ladies no longer have any hold on me now. You see, for me that God of the clergy is as dead as a doornail. But does that make me an atheist? Clergymen consider me one – so be it - but you see, I love, and how could I feel love if I were not alive myself, or if others were not alive; and if we are alive there is something wondrous about it. Now call that God or human nature or whatever you like, but there is a certain something I cannot define systematically, although it is very much alive and real, and you see, for me that something is God or as good as God…

Source: From a letter by Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, December 21, 1881

Restored to Eternal Life

One thing we know for sure about our God: Our God is a God of the living, not of the dead. God is life. God is love. God is beauty. God is goodness. God is truth. God doesn't want us to die. God wants us to live. Our God, who loves us from eternity to eternity, wants to give us life for eternity.
When that life was interrupted by our unwillingness to give our full yes to God's love, God sent Jesus to be with us and to say that great yes in our name and thus restore us to eternal life. So let's not be afraid of death. There is no cruel boss, vengeful enemy, or cruel tyrant waiting to destroy us - only a loving, always forgiving God, eager to welcome us home.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey To Becoming a Man

We all find out who we are by the process of finding out who we are not. Little boys try to walk around in their fathers' shoes. They trip and slide, then retie their little-boy runners on their little-boy feet. Older boys have to distance themselves from mothers and sisters and girl classmates and hang out with the "fellas." After contrasting himself with girls and women, a man turns to finding out who he is by comparing himself with other males. This is a dangerous test that can result in "compara-sinning," in which he measures the worst of himself with the best of one other male. So the journey moves from a sense of inferiority through awareness and up the hill of acceptance.
By his physical and psychological sexuality, a man is a donor and a doer. First he tries to give without awareness and acceptance. After he has become aware of himself through interactions with others, he arrives at self-donation out of gratitude for what he has received. Manhood is the final and graceful, level place for living, when he has accepted himself gratefully. This process is assisted greatly by those from whom he had to distance himself earlier. Parents in various forms give the boy-becoming-man wisdom, history and vision. Women give him a deeper sense of his heart, emotions and gentleness.
This process of becoming a man allows him to face God, his creator, with simple honesty. The journey is all a creational walk with God. A mature man does less demanding of life and others, but desires to receive more so that he might donate more of himself to others.

- Fr. Larry Gillick, S.J.

Generous Giving

"A generous man devises generous things, and by generosity he shall stand." (Isaiah 32:8 NKJV)
If there be any truer message of a [person] than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

- Robert South

God's Timeless Time

There is no "after" after death. Words like after and before belong to our mortal life, our life in time and space. Death frees us from the boundaries of chronology and brings us into God's "time," which is timeless. Speculations about the afterlife, therefore, are little more than just that: speculations. Beyond death there is no "first" and "later," no "here" and "there," no "past," "present," or "future." God is all in all. The end of time, the resurrection of the body, and the glorious coming again of Jesus are no longer separated by time for those who are no longer in time.
For us who still live in time, it is important not to act as if the new life in Christ is something we can comprehend.

- Henri Nouwen

How High?

How high is this mountain Lord, how high must I climb
And on the other side, what is it I'll find
The distance ahead seems such a great length
I'm not really sure if I have the strength
Forgive me for questioning, but I need to know
Is this really the direction You want me to go?

I heard no response to the questing I asked
And the mountain ahead seemed such a great task
I was tired and weary, had tried my best
But the load was too heavy, so I sat down to rest
As I sat for a while under the shade of a tree
The answers I was seeking came to me.

The road I had been traveling was no mistake
This was the direction He meant me to take
How high is the mountain... I need not know
If He leads me there, then I must go
And wherever it takes me, I'll not ask why
With God at my side, no mountain's too high.

- J. Oswald

Battling Hurry

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

Imagine for a moment that someone gave you this prescription, with the warning that your life depends on it. Consider the possibility that perhaps your life does depend on it. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry can destroy our souls. Hurry can keep us from living well. As Carl Jung wrote, "Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil."
Again and again, as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

- John Ortberg in "The Life You've Always Wanted"

Giving Permission to Die

One of the greatest gifts we can offer our family and friends is helping them to die well. Sometimes they are ready to go to God but we have a hard time letting them go. But there is a moment in which we need to give those we love the permission to return to God, from whom they came. We have to sit quietly with them and say: "Do not be afraid ... I love you, God loves you ... it's time for you to go in peace. ... I won't cling to you any longer ... I set you free to go home ... go gently, go with my love." Saying this from our heart is a true gift. It is the greatest gift love can give.
When Jesus died he said: "Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit" (Luke 23:46). It is good to repeat these words often with our dying friends. With these words on their lips or in their hearts, they can make the passage as Jesus did.

- Henri Nouwen

Nurturing the Eternal Life Within Us

The knowledge that Jesus came to dress our mortal bodies with immortality must help us develop an inner desire to be born to a new eternal life with him and encourage us to find ways to prepare for it.
It is important to nurture constantly the life of the Spirit of Jesus - which is the eternal life - that is already in us. Baptism gave us this life, the Eucharist maintains it, and our many spiritual practices - such as prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, and spiritual guidance - can help us to deepen and solidify it. The sacramental life and life with the Word of God gradually make us ready to let go of our mortal bodies and receive the mantle of immortality. Thus death is not the enemy who puts an end to everything but the friend who takes us by the hand and leads us into the Kingdom of eternal love.

- Henri Nouwen

Death, a New Birth

There comes a time in all our lives when we must prepare for death. When we become old, get seriously ill, or are in great danger, we can't be preoccupied simply with the question of how to get better unless "getting better" means moving on to a life beyond our death. In our culture, which in so many ways is death oriented, we find little if any creative support for preparing ourselves for a good death. Most people presume that our only desire is to live longer on this earth. Still, dying, like giving birth, is a way to new life, and as Ecclesiastes says: "There is a season for everything: ... a time for giving birth, a time for dying" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2).
We have to prepare ourselves for our death with the same care and attention as our parents prepared themselves for our births.

- Henri Nouwen

Giving A Bum A Hug

I walked down Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. There was a filthy bum, covered with soot from head to toe. He had a huge beard. I'll never forget the beard. It was a gigantic beard with rotted food stuck in it. He held a cup of McDonald's coffee and mumbled as he walked along the street. He spotted me and said, "Hey, Mister. You want some of my coffee?"
I knew I should take some to be nice, and I did. I gave it back to him and said, "You're being pretty generous giving away your coffee this morning. What's gotten into you that you're giving away your coffee all of a sudden?" He said, "Well, the coffee was especially delicious this morning, and I figured if God gives you something good you ought to share it with people."
I figured, this is the perfect set up. I said, "Is there anything I can give you in return?" I'm sure he's going to hit me for five dollars. He said, "Yeah, you can give me a hug." I was hoping for the five dollars.
He put his arms around me. I put my arms around him. And I realised something. He wasn't going to let me go. He was holding onto me. Here I am an establishment guy, and this bum is hanging on to me. He's hugging me. He's not going to let me go. People are passing on the street. They're staring at me. I'm embarrassed. But little by little my embarrassment turned to awe.
I heard a voice echoing down the corridors of time saying, "I was hungry. Did you feed Me? I was naked. Did you clothe Me? I was sick. Did you care for Me? I was the bum you met on Chestnut Street. Did you hug Me? For if you did it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to Me. And if you failed to do it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you failed to do it unto Me."

- Tony Campolo in "Year of Jubilee," from Preaching Today

The Dilemma of Life

Do we desire to be with Christ in the resurrection? It seems that most of us are not waiting for this new life but instead are doing everything possible to prolong our mortal lives. Still, as we grow more deeply into the spiritual life - the life in communion with our risen Lord - we gradually get in touch with our desire to move through the gate of death into the eternal life with Christ. This is no death wish but a desire for the fulfillment of all desires. Paul strongly experienced that desire. He writes: "Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would be a positive gain. ... I am caught in this dilemma: I want to be gone and to be with Christ, and this is by far the stronger desire - and yet for your sake to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need" (Philippians 1:21-24). This is a dilemma that few of us have, but it lays bare the core of the spiritual struggle.

- Henri Nouwen

Stones instead of Bread?

Recently this headline caught my attention: “A LOW-COST LAPTOP FOR EVERY CHILD - Effort to link world’s rural poor to Internet with $100 computers gets boost from U.N.” Shivers went through me. Over the years, my wife and I have traveled to more than two dozen Third World countries and have seen children struggling with unbelievable obstacles—hunger, disease, and countless other ills. Amazingly, these children were happy with the little they had. Certainly they needed help—but not low-cost laptops, as trumpeted by the headline I referred to above. That would be like giving stones to someone asking for bread.

- Johann Christoph Arnold

Forgiveness Economics

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart.... Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits

- Hannah More in "Christianity: A Practical Principle," in "Practical Piety"

Dare Not Speak?

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie,
Dust unto dust—
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell,
Too strong to strive—
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng,
The coward and the meek—
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak.

Ralph Chaplin was a conscientious objector during World War I.

Spiritual Bodies

In the resurrection we will have spiritual bodies. Our natural bodies came from Adam, our spiritual bodies come from Christ, Christ is the second Adam, offering us new bodies not subject to destruction. As Paul says: "as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [Adam], so we shall bear the likeness of the heavenly one [Christ]" (1 Corinthians 15:49).
Our spiritual bodies are Christ-like bodies. Jesus came to share with us the life in our mortal bodies so that we would also be able to share in his spiritual body. "Mere human nature," Paul says, "cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50). Jesus came to dress our perishable nature with imperishability and our mortal nature with immortality (see 1 Corinthians 15:53). Thus it is in the body that our spiritual life finds its fullest manifestation.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Accepting my Disability

Why so Long?
The epic Exodus story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt across the desert to the Promised Land leads me to ask, "Why did it take so long?" Without transport, with small children, the elderly, and the animals, their progress was certainly impaired. But they still didn't need forty years! More compelling is that God was the leader through Moses! Never having tried it mind you, I estimate they could have made the trip in five or six months, maximum. So why, with God as leader, was it a journey of forty years - circling, camping out, and wandering?
My journey to accept a slow, wonderful, and painful transformation of my heart of stone into a heart of flesh is a microcosm of this Exodus journey. I don't like my stony responses to the pain of my life: blame, anger, hurt, resentment, revenge, and self- pity. But I also don't easily let them go either. I'm disabled somehow, enslaved, - clinging to my need to feel justified and to get even. At the same time I long to experience emotional freedom and the joy of my membership within the human family.
My learning from the journey thus far is first of all, to stay close to God, the leader and to ask for support to live the way of love.Then, like the Israelites I'm learning to accept that I often get lost, make mistakes, go around in circles, and wrestle with choices that eventually lead to my transformation. Finally I HAVE to respect time. I want it all NOW, but this particular transformation, I realize, is the journey of my lifetime. The journey is wonderful and terrible, but the destination is fulfillment beyond imagining!

- Sue Mostell

Our Lives, Sowing Times

Our short lives on earth are sowing time. If there were no resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing. How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain, vanishing in the earth with our mortal flesh and bones? Because God loves us unconditionally, from eternity to eternity, God cannot allow our bodies - the same as that in which Jesus, his Son and our saviour, appeared to us - to be lost in final destruction.
No, life on earth is the time when the seeds of the risen body are planted. Paul says: "What is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.
The wonderful knowledge, that nothing we live in our body is lived in vain, holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.

- Henri Nouwen

Our Mortal Bodies: Seeds for the Resurrection

Our mortal bodies, flesh and bones, will return to the earth. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says: "Everything goes to the same place, everything comes from the dust, everything returns to the dust" (Ecclesiastes 3:20). Still, all that we have lived in our bodies will be honoured in the resurrection, when we receive new bodies from God.
What sorts of bodies will we have in the resurrection? Paul sees our mortal bodies as the seeds for our resurrected bodies: "What you sow must die before it is given new life; and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but only a bare grain, of wheat I dare say, or some other kind; it is God who gives it the sort of body that he has chosen for it, and for each kind of seed its own kind of body" (1 Corinthians 15:36-38). We will be as unique in the resurrection as we are in our mortal bodies, because God, who loves each of us in our individuality, will give us bodies in which our most unique relationship with God will gloriously shine.

- Henri Nouwen

Having Reverence and Respect for the Body

In so many ways we use and abuse our bodies. Jesus' coming to us in the body and his being lifted with his body in the glory of God call us to treat our bodies and the bodies of others with great reverence and respect.
God, through Jesus, has made our bodies sacred places where God has chosen to dwell. Our faith in the resurrection of the body, therefore, calls us to care for our own and one another's bodies with love. When we bind one another's wounds and work for the healing of one another's bodies, we witness to the sacredness of the human body, a body destined for eternal life.

- Henri Nouwen

Wounds Becoming Signs of Glory

The resurrection of Jesus is the basis of our faith in the resurrection of our bodies. Often we hear the suggestion that our bodies are the prisons of our souls and that the spiritual life is the way out of these prisons. But by our faith in the resurrection of the body we proclaim that the spiritual life and the life in the body cannot be separated. Our bodies, as Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19) and, therefore, sacred. The resurrection of the body means that what we have lived in the body will not go to waste but will be lifted in our eternal life with God. As Christ bears the marks of his suffering in his risen body, our bodies in the resurrection will bear the marks of our suffering. Our wounds will become signs of glory in the resurrection.

- Henri Nouwen

The Hidden Resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus was a hidden event. Jesus didn't rise from the grave to baffle his opponents, to make a victory statement, or to prove to those who crucified him that he was right after all. Jesus rose as a sign to those who had loved him and followed him that God's divine love is stronger than death. To the women and men who had committed themselves to him, he revealed that his mission had been fulfilled. To those who shared in his ministry, he gave the sacred task to call all people into the new life with him.
The world didn't take notice. Only those whom he called by name, with whom he broke bread, and to whom he spoke words of peace were aware of what happened. Still, it was this hidden event that freed humanity from the shackles of death.

- Henri Nouwen