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Henri J. M. Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son

© Kathryn Morse

. . . a priest, his favorite painting, and his book about it . . .

Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996) is one of the most beloved Catholic figures of the 20th century. His hundreds of books and papers are recommended to Protestants, as well as Catholics, especially The Wounded Healer. He was born in the Netherlands, the eldest child in his family, and ordained a priest in 1957.

He had a distinguished career teaching psychology, Christian spirituality and ministry at the Catholic Theological Institute in Utrecht, Notre Dame (helping establish the psychology department), Harvard Divinity School and Yale Divinity School. The Yale University Library, Divinity School Special Collections has over 82 boxes of Nouwen's writing. This is about 30 feet of shelf space and includes books, papers, classroom materials and notes.

In 1983, he began a journey which took him away from academia and in 1986 he became the pastor at L'Arche Daybreak community in Toronto, Canada. More than 90 L'Arche communities throughout the world provide a home for persons with mental handicaps.

Actually, the journey away from academia may have begun sooner. In Gracias: A Latin American Journal, a journal he kept during six months in Bolivia and Peru, he wrote that his "intelligence, skill, power, influence or connections" were useless in his displacement from his normal surroundings. He wrote about "brokenness" and how it puts us in a place of receiving rather than giving. This experience was to be repeated and expanded upon in his spiritual journey.

In Compassion: A Reflection on Christian Life, Nouwen wrote, "Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the under privileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there."

Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son

Nouwen's journey to the L'Arche Daybreak community began in his heart and spirit a long time before he actually made the move. But before he could leave his successful academic career to pastor at a home for the mentally challenged, he had to find himself as one who was broken and in need of a father, and as one who could be a father to the most broken.