Henri Nouwen, at one point in his life, was dean of Harvard School of Divinity. He left that prestigious position at a call from God to work at L'Arche, a home for the mentally handicapped. I've tried to read most things that he has written. These quotes come from my favorite book of his, "In the Name of Jesus". I read this book (it's short and has a huge font) once a month on my day of silence. It always speaks good, hard stuff to me. In the book, he parallels the temptation of Christ (Matthew 4) with the post-resurrection challenge by Christ to Peter (John 21). It's some really good stuff.
"We have to hear that question ['Do you love Me?' John 21:15-17] as being central to all of our Christian ministry because it is the question that can allow us to be, at the same time, irrelevant and truly self-confident."
"Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving Him are the same thing."
"Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up on our opinion about a given subject."
"When spirituality becomes spiritualization, life in the Body becomes carnality. When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the Body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy. Christian leaders are called to live the Incarnation, that is, to live in the Body, not only in their own bodies but also in the corporate Body of the community and to discover there the presence of the Holy Spirit."
"If there is any hope for the church in the future, it will be hope for a poor church in which its leaders are willing to be led."
"The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on a cross."
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