Book Review: A Sorrow Shared: A Combined edition of the Nouwen classics in Memoriam and a Letter of Consolation
Henri Nouwen was considered one of the greatest spiritual masters of the twentieth century. I was first introduced to his writings over twenty years ago when I was given a copy of “With Open Hands” as a gift for my service as a catechist. He was born in Holland on January 24, 1932, and ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Utrecht. After earning his degree in psychology, in 1964, he traveled to the United States where he worked in a number of capacities. On his first journey he served as a visiting professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Notre Dame. He returned to Holland in 1968 to teach and earn his theology degree. He returned to the United States in 1971 and taught pastoral theology at Yale Divinity School until 1981. During this time he served as a scholar in residence at the North American College in Rome. He visited Latin America spending much of his time in poor communities. From 1983 to 1985, he taught at Harvard Divinity School. In 1985, he traveled to France where he lived for nine months at L’Arche, a Christian community founded by Jean Varnier in which people with handicaps and their assistants try to live together in the spirit of the Gospel. In 1986, he became priest-inresidence at Daybreak, a L’Arche community in Toronto. On September 2, 1995, he began his sabbatical journey from Daybreak to write, reflect, and visit family and friends. This, his final journey, is memorialized in the book titled Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year. Three weeks after writing his last entry he passed away on September 21, 1996. Henri Nouwen’s appeal, I think, was his ability to effectively articulate the struggles we all encounter on our spiritual journey. The spiritual life is one marked by struggles and challenges. There are moments of joy, sadness, failure, and discouragement. He was not afraid of opening his heart to share his feelings and emotions, which many of us have and will experience along our way. For instance, I can identify with the sense of restlessness he sometimes experienced in his prayer life. His lack of patience and anger with others resonates with me in my relationship with others. His need for the intimacy of friendship, a need we all share, was often alluded to in his writings. This combined volume of two of his works explores an experience that many of us have or will experience in our lifetimes: the death of a parent. In this case it was that of his beloved mother. He also explores the emotion of grief. We grieve for many things in life such as failed relationships, failure to attain goals; and the most poignant is that over the death of a loved one. In In Memoriam Nouwen explores his grief upon the death of his mother in 1978 from both the perspective of a loving The Linacre Quarterly 81 (1) 2014, 92–95