Who was Henri Nouwen?

A Spiritual Master for Our Times

Henri Nouwen was a Dutch-born Catholic priest, professor, psychologist and prolific writer. He taught psychology at the University of Notre Dame and pastoral theology at the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard before leaving academia to become the pastor at L’Arche Daybreak, a community for people with intellectual disabilities. A master communicator, Nouwen wrote and spoke with great openness and vulnerability about faith, spiritual formation, prayer, social justice, and other themes related to the spiritual life. He wrote thirty-nine books that sold over one million copies in his lifetime and were translated into more than thirty-five languages. Today, book sales have surpassed 8.5 million copies. Books drawn from Nouwen’s archives continue to be published. Nouwen died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1996. He was 64 years old.

During his lifetime, Henri Nouwen wrote thirty-nine books which sold over one million copies. Today, book sales have surpassed seven million copies in more than thirty-five  languages. Books drawn from his unpublished writing and other sources continue to be published. With his great honesty and vulnerability about his own experience of God and the spiritual life, his books continue to resonate today.

Henri Nouwen’s large literary collection was generally written and published between 1969 and 1996, the year of his death.  Works published since then include those written or edited by other authors, or reprints and revisions of original works.  Over the last few decades, various expressions and ideas have evolved in the areas of human development, psychology, spirituality and pastoral care.  If Henri were alive today, he would no doubt be sensitive to using more inclusive language when it comes to many areas, including but not limited to gender, images of God and addressing persons with disabilities.  It is the wish of the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust, not to modify Henri’s work, but to continue to print any original publications with the original text he used.  Henri’s wisdom continues to be timeless and profound, and as his works are read in the context of the times they were written, the reader is free to adapt their own understanding, considering language which is current and comfortable for them.

Although Henri died in 1996, he remains one of the most influential spiritual writers of our time. With an extraordinary ability to reach audiences from every denominational, cultural and political persuasion, his books continue to inspire and encourage those who seek to live a spiritual life.

His Life

Henri was an ordained priest and a gifted preacher who embodied the inherent incongruities of integrating life and spirit. His honesty was both enthralling and unsettling. When Henri embraced his own emotional and spiritual frailty as a conduit for discovering his status as God’s beloved, readers responded. Through Henri, they discovered that, despite their own brokenness, they too were deeply loved by God. 

In addition to writing, Henri had a distinguished teaching career at some of the most prestigious and powerful post-secondary institutions in America, including the University of Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. Yet the place that influenced Henri most profoundly was the antithesis of status and influence. In 1986, he accepted the position of pastor at L’Arche Daybreak, a community for people with intellectual disabilities in Richmond Hill, Ontario.  It’s here where Nouwen found the kind of community he had been searching for all of his life. It remained his home until his death in 1996.

Henri Nouwen was a spiritual thinker and writer who wrote about the life of Jesus and the love of God in ways that have inspired countless people to trust God more fully.

For generations of priests, pastors, teachers and seekers, Henri Nouwen created a template for ministry and spiritual formation that offered a balanced and creative theology of service that embraced woundedness as part of our shared human condition. Few spiritual writers have been so unabashedly candid about their own struggles and brokenness. His words speak directly to the wounds we each have experienced in our own lives, and they remind us that we are each a fully loved child of God, scars and all.