All of the following quotes are taken from Father Henri Nouwen’s “Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit.” It is a little book but feels like a tome because it is so heavy with wisdom and inspiration.

Fr Nouwen is a Catholic priest and has written 40 books on the spiritual life.

Here’s ten of my most favorite Henri Nouwen quotations from his book “Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit.”

• “The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?”
• “A theology of weakness challenges us to look at weakness not as a worldly weakness that allows us to be manipulated by the powerful in society and church, but as a total and unconditional dependence on God that opens us to be true channels of the divine power that heals the wounds of humanity and renews the face of the earth.”
• “This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.”
• “As long as we imagine and live as if there is no peace in sight, and that it all depends on us to make it come about, we are on the road to self-destruction. But when we trust that the God of love has already given the peace we are searching for, we will see this peace breaking through the broken soil of our human condition and we will be able to let it grow fast and even heal the economic and political maladies of our time.”
• “God loved you before you were born, and God will love you after you die.”
• “Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
• “It is in the passion that the fullness of Jesus’ love shines through. It is a waiting love, a love that does not seek control.”
• “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.”
• “It is important for us to realize that when Jesus says, ‘It is accomplished’ (John 19:30), he does not simply mean, ‘I have done all the things I wanted to do.’ He also means, ‘I have allowed things to be done to me that needed to be done to me in order for me to fulfill my vocation.’ Jesus does not fulfill his vocation in action only, but also in passion.”
• “Here we glimpse the mystery of God’s incarnation. God became human not only to act among us but also to be the recipient of our responses.”

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/felipe_gabaldon/4177158558/