Some questions are worth asking. It was in fact a question that led Henry Nouwen to exam carefully what Christ demands of leaders, as opposed to the world’s qualifications. Nouwen writes that as he became older and realized that doubling his years would be unlikely, he asked himself: “Did becoming older bring me closer to Jesus?”[1] The answer to this question forms the content of his book. Throughout church history self-analysis was an essential duty of man. The Puritans were masters at analyzing their souls. Our current society adores fooling itself. It says that to analyze self is a royal waste since to whom are they responsible to, except self. This is one among many differences between the Christian faith of Nouwen and secular culture.
Nouwen was not comfortable with the version of maturity that so many express.[2] He wanted to dig deeper into his soul and find why his prayers were so poor and why was he re-considering those burning questions that he once thought to have been answered. The great lecturer of Harvard was now facing a new dilemma: where to go from here? The answer took him to where he spent his last days. One of the greatest catholic minds 
of our time moved his brilliance to L’Arche. L’Arche is a community for handicapped people. It is there that Henry Nouwen gleaned so richly to form a Christo-centric view of leadership.
Analyzing Jesus’ temptation in Matthew 4 and Peter’s call to be a shepherd in John 21, Nouwen succeeds in bringing to life those mysterious, but conspicuous elements of Christian leadership. The overwhelming amount of knowledge and academic credentials seem worthless when one’s job is to care for those who cannot care for themselves. Yet it was in this time when Nouwen writes:
This experience was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity.[3] Continue reading “The Wisdom of Henry Nouwen and the Glory of Service”