From Rapture Anxiety to Sacred Rest: Gen Z, Henri Nouwen, and the Longing for Home
In this episode of Now & Then… Again, Wendy VanderWal Martin sits down with Matthew Vaccaro, a Divinity student, youth minister, and member of the Henri Nouwen Society’s 30 Under 30 cohort. Matthew reflects on his journey from an anxiety-filled rapture theology to the spacious, compassionate spirituality of Henri Nouwen. Together, they explore loneliness, community, Gen Z’s exhaustion with productivity culture, and the healing power of rest, ritual, and belovedness—offering a hopeful vision of what it means to find “home” in a wounded world.
Resources & Links
2026 Conference Website - https://www.conference.henrinouwen.org/
Sponsor 30 > 30 https://www.henrinouwen.org/give
Book Discussed:
Reaching Out
https://amzn.to/37BuyjZ (US)
https://amzn.to/2AxxCBJ (CAD)
Available On
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Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Welcome friends to a new episode of Now & Then… Again, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. I'm your host, Wendy VanderWal Martin, and it's an absolute delight today to have one of our 30 under 30 cohort Young Nouwen leaders as my guest, Matt Vaccaro. Matt, welcome.
Matthew Vaccaro:
Thank you, Wendy. It's good to be here.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
So if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know that we have this amazing group of young leaders who are interested and inspired by Henri Nouwen. We're journeying together in cohort fashion for the course of a year. Each leader is paired with a mentor, has monthly meetings with me and the rest of the cohort, and is also working on a project that integrates the spiritual wisdom of Henri Nouwen and their particular context. And we'll hear more about Matt's project as we go through the conversation. But this is a wonderful group that's accompanying each other. And then we'll gather all together at our 2026 anniversary conference, Longing for Home: the prophetic witness of Henri Nouwen in a wounded world, May 14 to 16 in Toronto in Canada. We're looking forward to that. But before we get to the conference, tell us a bit about who you are, where you're situated, and, and where you're joining the conversation from in your life…
Matthew Vaccaro:
I am zooming in from lovely Nashville, Tennessee. I am in my third and final year getting a Master's of Divinity at Vanderbilt's Divinity School. A I'm just coming from a staff meeting from the church where I am a youth director.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
A youth director that keeps you busy along just being a student. Yes. So, just a few more weeks until you're on break.
Matthew Vaccaro:
Yes, yes. I think both I and my students are feeling the, the gravity of this time this semester as we're getting in our last few papers in, I just completed a first draft of my Master's thesis, that I'm going to be editing. It's, it's been a time.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Tell us, what's your master's thesis about?
Matthew Vaccaro:
My master thesis is on pre-millennial dispensationalism, otherwise known as the Rapture. And… which was the sort of story of the end of the world that I sort of inherited in my upbringing. I grew up, an evangelical flavored Pentecostal, and I’m sort of imploring my communities to listen to more eschatological voices that are a little less anxiety inducing and encourage more investment in the here and now. The kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven as it goes to, I'll fly away. I'm going to rapture you out of this joint
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
<laugh>. Well, I have talked to many who grew up in that kind of context, who have shared with me just the sheer trauma of being terrified that they would wake up and their family would have been raptured and they would've been left behind. So, <laugh>, I think your master's thesis is an important one, and one, sadly, that still needs to be heard, if only for the sake of those young ones who don't quite have the frontal lobe development to process all of that sort of fiery rhetoric that leaves them quite terrified
Matthew Vaccaro:
From, from the time I was young. And I read the Left Behind books to, to this day, when I'm staying with my parents, if like I sleep in and my family go to like the market or something, my sister Gabby will text me, Hey, we went out. You weren't capital L left behind <laugh>. No Rapture has occurred.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Right, right. So from that kind of upbringing to Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest. Tell us how you first encountered the writing of Henri Nouwen.
Matthew Vaccaro:
I've gone through a, the gamut of sort of, North American Christian denominations. I have eight years of Catholic and Jesuit specific schooling that I owe a ton of my spiritual and ethical formation to. I actually did encounter Nouwen from my Catholic education. I encountered it from my mom. My mother was my first theology teacher. She homeschooled me for a little bit, really fed into my intellectual hyper fixation on religion. And she finished her master's degree in worship studies right as I was beginning my Master of Divinity. And in that program she found Nouwen's, Return of the Prodigal Son. So she like sent me the audiobook. That sort of got me into it. And as I was going through Divinty School, I, which is like very interested in community building and developing one's sort of inner life against loneliness, Nouwen writes in Reaching Out, but a movement from like loneliness to solitude and hostility to hospitality.
Matthew Vaccaro:
And so much of my own spiritual journey has just been about finding community. I was the, you know, Sunday school misfit, the sort of socially awkward nerd. And I, it was just a very long point of prayer just trying to find friends and trying to find community. And now that I have like developed a support system, like I see that as a grace from God. I see that as a source of revelation. So I wanted to read into Nouwen because he writes quite a bit about developing that inner life and developing community
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. They're inextricably linked for Henri. Absolutely. You can't be a lone ranger Christian and read Nouwen faithfully <laugh>. Now. Matt, tell us how did you hear about the 30 under 30 cohort and what made you want to participate in it? Tell it to us from your perspective.
Matthew Vaccaro:
Yes. Our Director of Student Life at VDS, who has just been a wonderful relationship and wonderful, like, mentor told me about the fellowship from like her grad school sources. And I love my Divinity school, and I love sort of developing into, the wide breadth of Protestant traditions after like eight years of Catholic theological education, being a Protestant myself, but there's, I owe so much to the Catholic intellectual tradition. So that piqued my interest, to continuing. And, I had had Henri on my bookshelf for a while and wanted an excuse to get to know young faith motivated leaders outside of my cohort, and an excuse to just read the books on my bookshelf, <laugh>
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
<laugh>. And has it been what you thought it was going to be? Or how have you encountered this cohort of, at one point we had 34 leaders. We, a few have had life situations and so, but we're still pretty close to around 30ish. How has that experience been for you?
Matthew Vaccaro:
It's been really nice. I've been slowly working my way through, like reaching out to people individually and trying to get closer. I think after like our third meeting because our first two cohort meetings, I was zooming from my hometown in New Jersey, but right when I got back to Nashville for the semester, it just so happened that another, 30<30 was in town for a wedding and we got breakfast together. Got to know each other. And I've been blessed throughout my life of like accidentally stumbling upon like really good friendships through the internet and eventually meeting like internet friends in person. I've never had as fast a turnaround as meeting us all on Zoom in, June, and then meeting someone in person in August.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
And tell us about your mentor. What's that mentoring relationship been like?
Matthew Vaccaro:
Honestly, I was wondering if you had like a crystal ball that you used to match us. I'm with Dr. Michael Waggenman, who has also sort of run a denominational gauntlet. Started with very much like an academic interest in theology, but then got a taste for spiritual direction in particular college campus ministry, and landed in, I believe, the Reformed Church of Canada, if I remember correctly. And, I'm currently doing college campus ministry with the Presbyterian USA church. But just the amount of like parallels of our journey made it like very easy to connect early on. He has a very warm and pastoral presence. And we started our mentorship going through the book, Reaching Out together, and just like talking about the different movements, and how it relates to sort of young adult spirituality and how we can like encourage students to sort of quiet down, listen to their inner voice, grow their inner space. But it's, he's also just been on the receiving end and talked me through some of just the ups and downs of last year of Divinity school. And I'm just very, very grateful for his very non-anxious, supportive presence in our conversations.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Well, I don't think I had a crystal ball for sure, but I will tell you honestly that it's been one of the most significant joys in my last year, was doing the work of pairing mentors and mentees, because so many of you have said, like, this is a phenomenal pairing. And certainly one prays and one pulls on relationships that one has. I didn't know all of the mentors incredibly well, but, but a good number of them I knew fairly well. And it's just been such a delight to hear when the match has been, you know, just really life giving and, and bearing good fruit, as Henri would say in the lives of both the mentees and the mentor. So that's been such an important part of this program. But the other part is working on a project, and so you're in the midst of school and we've tried to communicate really clearly that this is a learning experience that is intended to be quite distinct from a typical academic experience. And so it's not about productivity, it's not about even, a benchmark or a certain set of expectations, but to really have a learning experience that's marked by grace and freedom and joy. And so I hope that's been the case as you've been working on your project. Many of the projects have evolved since the beginning of the cohort. But tell us a bit about what you're engaging, what you and Michael have talked about in your mentoring situation and, and where is your project heading at this point?
Matthew Vaccaro:
Yeah, it's, hold, pick up again. I am wanting to create like some, check-in questions, some sort of spiritual exercise, something like, an instruction line for a retreat for young adults, particularly like going into college and early college age, for them to sort of check in with themselves and sort of start telling their own narratives of what their spiritual interior life looks like. I am, I'm recovering theater kid. I did improv and d and d and I love storytelling, and I love the sort of spiritual exercise of testimony giving. So I'm looking for a way to show some more like storytelling into those check-ins, but just like, want to try and find a way for people to like, tend to their own garden and like have a space to stop and take stock of themselves. So thus far it's been a lot of reading. We did the study of Reaching Out, we've been looking at, The Life of the Beloved. My sources have just been bleeding into my other many div school activities, Nouwen has snuck his way into two of the last three sermons I've given to my campus ministry kids. And I've, without even thinking about it, suggested Nouwen as a resource to no less than half of my classmates in my thesis writing cohort. And now he's made his way into a couple of their projects.
Matthew Vaccaro:
So I'm trying to absorb a lot, digest a lot, and come out with, I almost want to, I almost want to call it like even less of like a retreat curriculum and more like some informative games almost. Ways for people to like enter into spiritual self-assessment and try and get away from the noise. I don't know if that made any sense,
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
<laugh>. Absolutely. And it's exciting for me because the seed of the idea for the 30, under 30, certainly it was a great play on the number 30, 30 leaders age 30 and under, heading towards the 30th anniversary conference 30 years since Henri passed away, which means that all of you were not born during Henri's lifetime. He was already gone crossed the veil. And it, I read Henri younger than most of you, I read him as a teenager, but he was still alive and still publishing. And I, I remember waiting for the Return of the Prodigal Son to come out and being so excited to read it. And so it's so important to me that your generation and younger have the opportunity to encounter Henri. I really do think Henri's wisdom is accessible and engageable and timeless. I mean, there are some time-bound things in parts of his writing, but generally speaking, his spiritual invitation is as important and significant.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
I'm careful not to use the word relevant, because Henri had a critique about being relevant <laugh>. and so one of the things that our cohort is going to do is to lead a Youth Day the day that the conference starts, it starts in the evening, but during that day, we hope to host around 300 Catholic high school students and invite them into spiritual practice into an awareness of who Henri Nouwen is and his offerings, and particularly how he speaks to themes like anxiety and loneliness and depression and the, the crushing weight of distraction and screens and so on. And so your project is just so exciting to me because it is about speaking to your generation and making it accessible to the realities of your peers. Tell me a bit more about that as, as you think about shaping this resource, shaping this inventory in a way that is mindful contextually of your generation.
Matthew Vaccaro:
I like that Nouwen really had his finger on the pulse of like his culture, but in a way that's been like really prophetic for like the social media era and the post COVID era. Like I think my generation, gen Zs and younger are, have more access to communication and more access to connection than ever. But like our algorithms are just so geared towards keeping you engaged, keeping you more oftentimes scared or angry than anything else. That they create feedback loops that just make you even more isolated. And like I especially see that working with younger people like post pandemic, like I'm only, I'm only seven years out of high school, but the difference between, my high school experience and the experience of some of my students is just really vast in terms of like their opportunities to communicate with people outside of their social bubble.
Matthew Vaccaro:
Just the push to constantly be doing and producing, and working towards college apps or grad school apps, internships, which started around when I was in high school, but I was still like amped up. People are busier than ever. They're noisier in noisier spaces than ever, but they're also just like feeling lonelier than ever. So I'm really hoping to give them a place where they can pause, give them a soft place to land, and no expectation for anything to be produced from it. Just a moment for them to be present in a space with themselves, with each other, hopefully with God.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Our November readings were looking at Gracias, which is Henri's journal from when he was in Bolivia. And in one of the entries he speaks about how he's been attending language school and he laments that community has not really been cultivated in this group of language students. And he talks about, you know, people are there in a very utilitarian sort of mode, like, I am taking Spanish so that I can go on mission field or get a certain job or what, you know, go on to further studies or whatever it might be. And it strikes me that what you've described is being shaped in a very utilitarian way that we're in this echo chamber of productivity and constantly looking to the future. You know, I am, I am, it's staggering to me how young kids are when they're being asked to think about their careers and everything lines up, you know, from age 13 to what they're going to be.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
And I think Henri speaks to so much of that and articulates it in a way that calls us to resist those systems and then cultivate the solitude and community again, that both/and that allows us to make space for God, for reflection, for quiet, for the ability to even see the system we're swimming in. That's hard to notice if we're just, you know, if we're doing our Dory: “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” So how have you found Henri to be invitational for you as you’re busy being a campus minister, being a student, trying to finish up, hurry up and <laugh> do really neat spiritual things. How is that working for you right now in the busyness of your life?
Matthew Vaccaro:
You know, I'm now realizing that my hopes as a youth minister is really a “do as I say, not as I do” because I also just can get very caught in future looking, constantly moving from thing to thing. I think that's clear with how fast I'm talking right now. And Nouwen's work has just invited me to consider that, my spirituality grows not only in things that I'm doing, but in rest that I am taking. I've, even though I know I've listed like two or three different jobs that I've been doing while in Div school, I've been taking time to go to like a midday mass at a church I'm not working at once or twice a week. And someone who didn't grow up, who grew up in a more like lower church worship setting, there's something just very refilling and rejuvenating about the slow, and repetitive and ritualistic space of a eucharistic service.
Matthew Vaccaro:
And, I've been taking, I've been taking solace in that. And I especially love how in, Life of the Beloved, Nouwen compares living into our own belovedness as being like the steps in the Eucharist: is blessed, taken, broken, and given out - I believe are the four movements. And I've been trying to integrate that more into my practice and actually, developing some restful spiritual life of my own rather than just talking about it and working at it all the time, but actually creating that quiet space for myself, which is an ongoing effort.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Absolutely. And I think for those of us who grew up with some overarching sense of perfection in the Christian journey, which inevitably instills that striving, you have got to do more, you have got to go deeper, you have got to have better, you know, more, more, more, more, more is better, better, better. That kind of question can seem like a “gotcha question” <laugh>. And that's of course not at all. The invitation I think that Nouwen lays out so beautifully for us is a very human one. I think Ron Rolheiser, who sits on the board of the Henri Nouwen Society and knows Henri Nouwen's work and life through and through tells us that Nouwen intentionally was able to offer vulnerable honesty without being exhibitionist. And I think that's sometimes a very delicate balance.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
But Anne Lamott says of Henri Nouwen that his honesty invites us to say “Me too.” And so when he talks about prayer, and then he says, but I haven't been praying much lately. Or he talks about contemplation, and then he says, but it's like monkeys jumping in a banana tree, <laugh>. And so he's very honest about the returning. That the practice is often returning, remembering, coming back, trying again. And in his sense of vocation, Henri spent his whole life searching for his vocation, even as he serves so faithfully. So I think for those of us who, like yourself are maybe, you know, really still in a discernment process about what's next, there is, I hope this embodied incarnate grace in Henri's writing that says, “You don't have to get it right and you don't have to get it right away.” You can just keep returning, returning to your sacred center, as Henri might say. So yeah, tell me about conveying that to your students in your project, but also to your own heart. How have you been able to convey that grace of returning more often than not?
Matthew Vaccaro:
My… the sermons I give end up being, you know, half a reflection and then half just a status report of where I've been wrestling. And I find great, I find great solace in the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. This idea that I find myself very rarely offering like answers to the deeper questions that my students ask. And what I try to give instead is a set of lenses through which they could look, and an acknowledgement that like, “Hey, I've also been chewing on this and I haven't reached the landing point, but this is where I am at this moment.”
Matthew Vaccaro:
I also just try to affirm their struggles when they tell me about how busy they are or how many things they're juggling. And I just want to say like, “Hey, that's a lot, and I, I want you to know that it's, it gets better, but also like, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be this extreme all of the time.” And reminding them to take care of themselves reminds me to take care of myself. <laugh>. I had a student who made a joke about how they've only had a regular meal like three times in the last week just because they've forgotten to food prep. Like not in a food insecurity way, like, but in just like a meal prep thing. It's like, okay, cool, instead, how about that? How about we do this instead? And the same day that we had this conversation, I got sucked into like a writing rabbit hole. And then I looked at the clock and it was like half past 10 and I hadn't had dinner yet. It's like, well, darn it, I should make myself an actual dinner instead of snacking. What they don't tell you about being a spiritual leader is you're accountable to yourself in order to not be a hypocrite to the people you're taking care of
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
<laugh>. Well, and that preachers preach to themselves all the time, right?
Matthew Vaccaro:
You know, they sure do
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Indeed. Well, Matt, one of the exciting things to look forward to in this 30 under 30 program is coming all together in person in Toronto for this amazing conference that has wonderful speakers, incredible breakouts. Some of the breakouts are being given by 30 under 30 leaders based on their project work. There's going to be phenomenal worship and times for space and spiritual practice and so on. But the theme of this conference is Longing for Home: the prophetic witness of Henri Nouwen in a wounded world. Essentially saying, “What has Henri said that will help us navigate this wounded world in a way that we don't lose our sacred center?” We don't lose our peace, we don't lose connection with hope. As you think about this conference theme, what comes to your mind as you've been engaging Henri, these last months?
Matthew Vaccaro:
I think about like, longing for home, and particularly in regards to community and loneliness. I think about the friend group I had when I was in elementary school and how just sort of like how easy and passionately we loved each other, how easy the connection came, how easy being present in a moment such that like we lost track of time was, and when we become adults, we have more responsibilities, we have more, more reason to look forward the future, which leads to a lot of anxiety, lead to, you know, harder to build trust, harder to build rapport. And I kind of, I long for those more open spaces where we can, like the little children just be very open to friendship and community and hospitality.
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
Well, my hope is that as the cohort sees each other incarnated in the flesh, that there will be a bit of a child likeness amongst us as we recognize connection that's been online for a year and, and now is actually present. I'm grateful for the technology that allows us to have a conversation like this you in Nashville, me and New Brunswick in Canada, and yet we do miss something of each other's presence and energy when we're connecting by Zoom. And so I know that I am very much looking forward to having the cohort altogether. We hope many of the mentors will also be coming to the conference, and that it will really be a time of deep connection and that that will carry forward into your lives and your journeys, and that you will have friends that you can call up and say, “I'm wounded, or I'm lonely, and I can't quite find my way to solitude, and I need someone who I know understands what that's all about.” So Matt, thank you so much for taking time out of this nearing the end of your semester to have this conversation. Thanks for being part of 30 under 30, and it's really been great to hear your thoughts and your reflections on Henri Nouwen.
Matthew Vaccaro:
Thank you for having me in the cohort and here….
Wendy VanderWal Martin:
<laugh> and Friends, we are looking for sponsors for our 30 under 30 leaders so that their travel accommodations, meals and conference registration can be covered. So if you're interested in that, please contact the Henri Nouwen Society, they'll connect you with me, and we'll have a great conversation about it. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, never ever, ever forget that you are the beloved of God.
