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The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming is a spiritual adventure story. A chance encounter with a poster depicting a detail of Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son set in motion a chain of events that enabled Nouwen to redefine and claim his vocation late in his life. In this book, which interweaves elements of art history, memoir, Midrash, and self-help, Nouwen brings the parable to life with empathic analyses of each character. Nouwen's absorption in the story (and the painting) is so complete that the father's challenge to love the son, and the son's challenge to receive that love, become Nouwen's own. And Nouwen's writing is so clear and his tone is so appealingly frank and humble that readers--no matter how far from home--will find hope for themselves in the prodigal peace Nouwen ultimately achieves. --Michael Joseph Gross

The beloved spiritual writer meditates on the parable of the prodigal son's return -- a powerful drama of fatherhood, filial duty, rivalry, and anger between brothers -- and its enduring lessons for Christianity.

Full-color photographs with gatefold.

The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

The Wounded Healer is a hope-filled and profoundly simple book that speaks directly to those men and women who want to be of service in their church or community, but have found the traditional ways often threatening and ineffective. In this book, Henri Nouwen combines creative case studies of ministry with stories from diverse cultures and religious traditions in preparing a new model for ministry. Weaving keen cultural analysis with his psychological and religious insights, Nouwen has come up with a balanced and creative theology of service that begins with the realization of fundamental woundedness in human nature. Emphasizing that which is in humanity common to both minister and believer, this woundedness can serve as a source of strength and healing when counseling others. Nouwen proceeds to develop his approach to ministry with an analysis of sufferings -- a suffering world, a suffering generation, a suffering person, and a suffering minister. It is his contention that ministers are called to recognize the sufferings of their time in their own hearts and make that recognition the starting point of their service. For Nouwen, ministers must be willing to go beyond their professional role and leave themselves open as fellow human beings with the same wounds and suffering -- in the image of Christ. In other words, we heal from our own wounds. Filled with examples from everyday experience, The Wounded Healer is a thoughtful and insightful guide that will be welcomed by anyone engaged in the service of others.

The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom is a collection of passages from Henri Nouwen's journals, written during a period when his self-esteem evaporated, his energy to work disappeared, and God seemed entirely unreal. This is not a book to be read straight through: each short chapter takes time to digest, because, like the following passage, each of Nouwen's thoughts has the raw complexity of real honesty:

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.

This is Henri Nouwen's "secret journal." It was  written during the most difficult period of his life, when he suddenly lost his self-esteem,  his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, even his hope in God. Although he experienced excruciating anguish and despair, he was still able to keep a journal in which he wrote a spiritual imperative to himself each day that emerged from his conversations with friends and supporters.



For more than eight years, Henri Nouwen felt that what he wrote was too raw and private to share with others. Instead, he published The Return of the Prodigal Son, in which he expressed some of the insights gained during his mental and spiritual crisis. But then friends asked him, "Why keep your anguish hidden from the many people who have been nurtured by your writing? Wouldn't it be of consolation for many to know about the fierce inner battle that lies underneath so many of your spiritual insights?"

For the countless men and women who have to live through the pain of broken relationships, or who suffer from the loss of a loved one, this book about the inner voice of love offers new courage, new hope, even new life.

The Dance of Life: Weaving Sorrows And Blessings into One Joyful Step

The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life

Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith

Spiritual Direction gives us the unique and unrivaled experience of having Henri Nouwen as our personal spiritual director, answering our questions about the spiritual life in his wise, comfortable, and engaging style. With Nouwen's guidance, we can reorient our lives and open the door to true spiritual transformation.

Henri Nouwen, the world-renowned spiritual guide and counselor, understood the spiritual life as a journey of faith and transformation that is deepened by accountability, community, and relationships. Though he counseled many people during his lifetime, his principles of spiritual direction were never written down. Now two of his longtime students, Michael Christensen and Rebecca Laird, have taken his famous course in spiritual direction and supplemented it with his unpublished writings to create the definitive work on Nouwen's thoughts on the Christian life. Stories, readings, and thematically organized questions for reflection and guided journal writing provide an unparalleled resource for spiritual direction, both for individuals and for small groups.

Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

With clarity and deep spiritual insight, this religious bestseller offers today's Christian a perceptive, systematic plan for living the spiritual life achieving union with God.

Can You Drink the Cup?

The last book published before Nouwen's death in 1996, Can You Drink the Cup? has been translated into ten languages and sold more than 135,000 copies. Exploring the deep spiritual impact of the question Jesus asked his friends James and John, Nouwen reflects upon the metaphor of the cup, using the images of holding, lifting, and drinking to articulate the basics of the spiritual life.

The Way of the Heart

Since it was first published more than twenty years ago, The Way of the Heart has helped millions of men and women cast off the anger and greed that trouble the world–and find love, compassion, and peace in the heart of God.

Inspired by the ancient teachings of St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers, The Way of the Heart clears before us a spiritual path consisting of three stepping-stones: Solitude (learning not to be alone but to be alone with God); Silence (the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive); and Prayer (standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart).

Distinguished theologian Henri Nouwen brilliantly illuminates each of these disciplines. In reflections that are beautifully clear and practical, as uplifting on the fourth reading as on the first, he helps us separate the wheat from the chaff in our spiritual lives–and reconnects us with what truly matters.

Within this one small book lies the most relevant and inspiring challenge that we shall ever face: to surrender the compulsive noise of the world for the way of the heart that leads us to God.

Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics (Library of Theological Ethics)