Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch Catholic priest, had a very interesting life and ministry--teaching courses on spirituality at Harvard and Yale, spending a year at a Trappist monastery, serving as a missionary to the poor in South America, and finally, coming home in the closing chapter of his life to a live-in community for mentally disabled adults in Toronto, where he served as both a personal caregiver to a profoundly disabled man, and as chaplain for the entire community. That’s the context for this story I want to share with you from his book, Life of the Beloved:
Not long ago, in my own community, I had a very personal experience of the power of a real blessing. Shortly before I started a prayer service in one of our houses, Janet, a handicapped member of our community, said to me, “Henri, can you give me a blessing?” I responded in a somewhat automatic way by tracing with my thumb the sign of the cross on her forehead. Instead of being grateful, however, she protested vehemently, “No, that doesn’t work. I want a real blessing!” I suddenly became aware of the ritualistic quality of my response to her request and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, …let me give you a real blessing when we are all together for the prayer service.” She nodded with a smile, and I realized that something special was required of me.
After the service, when about thirty people were sitting in a circle, I said, “Janet has asked me for a special blessing. She feels that she needs that now.” As I was saying this, I didn’t know what Janet really wanted. But she didn’t leave me in doubt for very long. As soon as I had said this, she stood up and walked towards me. I was wearing a long white robe with ample slides covering my hands as well as my arms. Spontaneously, Janet put her arms around me and laid her head against my chest. Without thinking, I covered her with my sleeves so that she almost vanished in the folds of my robe. As we held each other, I said, “Janet, I want you to know that you are God’s Beloved Daughter. You’re precious in God’s eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to the people in your house and all the good things you do show us what a beautiful human being you are. I know you feel a little low these days and that there is some sadness in your heart, but I want you to remember who you are: a very special person, deeply loved by God and all the people who are here with you.”
As I said these words, Janet raised her head and looked at me; and her broad smile showed that she had really heard and received the blessing. When she returned to her place, Jane, another handicapped woman, raised her hand and said, “I want a blessing, too.” She stood up and, before I knew it, had also laid her head against my chest. After I had spoken words of blessing to her, many more of the handicapped people followed, expressing the same desire to be blessed. Then a twenty-four year-old caregiver and student raised his hand and said, “And what about me?” “Sure,” I said, “Come.” As we stood before each other, I put my arms around him and said, “John, it is so good that you’re here. You’re God’s Beloved Son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember that you are loved with an everlasting love.” As I spoke these words, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and then he said, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
That evening I recognized the importance of blessing and being blessed, and reclaimed it as a true sign of the Beloved. The blessings that we give to each other expressions of the blessing that rests on us from all eternity. It is the deepest affirmation of our true self. We all need an ongoing blessing that allows us to hear in an ever-new way that we belong to a loving God who will never leaves us alone, but will remind us always that we are guided by love on every step of our lives. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as so many other figures in Israel’s history, all heard that blessing. Jesus, too, heard a voice from heaven saying, “You are my Beloved Son. With you I am well pleased.” This blessing sustained Jesus through all that followed. He never lost the intimate knowledge that he was blessed.
Hear these inspired words of the Apostle Paul (Ephesians 1:3-8):
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, according to his pleasure and will--to the praise of his glorious grace, when he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of all sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”
God has given each of us his richest, fullest blessing from heaven. We are blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. This story from Henri Nouwen’s life is a tender account of the way he served as a channel of God’s blessing to those persons under his care. But as Paul writes in this passage, we always live under God’s incredibly generous love, being chosen before the creation of the world and lovingly adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. It pleases God to freely share this kindness with us in the life of the One he loves--in the life of Jesus, within us--and he lavishes on us the riches of his grace.
But how many of us really get that? How many of us believe it wholeheartedly, or even halfheartedly, for that matter? We are truly and deeply and completely loved, chosen and blessed richly in God’s grace. But why is that so hard for us to grasp?
I suspect that it’s because we’re so humanly conditioned to believe that love has its own limits and boundaries. In terms of human relationships, we can’t trust that love will be either unconditional or unlimited. We can always blow it.
But what Paul is describing for us here, and what he found to be true for his own extraordinary life, is a perfection and fullness of love that only God could give, beyond the reach of our imagination.
This is true because of our personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and how God has taken us completely into his love as we’ve opened our hearts to him through faith in Christ. When God looks at us he sees us as being in Christ, a vital part of his Son’s heart and soul and life. He sees Jesus in us. Consequently, he loves us as wholeheartedly as he does his own Son.
Just ask yourself “What would my life look like if I lived it really believing I was thoroughly blessed and cherished by God, the One whose love matters most?” What a profound difference it would make in how we live our lives.
A woman recalls that she once asked several of her closest Christian friends if they truly believed they were loved by God. She said “an unnerving majority confided they were like me--doubting, at the deepest level of their souls, that anyone really loved them. God’s love for them stayed at a safe, theological distance.” All of their conviction about God loving ‘the world’ had never become real for them, personally.
What about you? Do you know in your heart of hearts that you’re cherished by God, unconditionally and absolutely? Or is this all still just an abstraction for you?
I think it would be a profound tragedy for us to miss this life-changing truth. It’s worth meditating on, letting it sink down into the depths of our hearts until we know its reality beyond all doubt. And when we do, here’s what I think will change:
We’ll begin to relax much more in our relationship with the Lord. We won’t constantly feel as though we always need to do better, pray more, give more, and be more. We’ll feel the security of a perfect, unchanging love.
And no doubt we’ll also love God more--more naturally and more freely--without any sense of that graceless religious guilt or duty. Our love will flow from us as a kind of lover’s deep affection, as it was always meant to be.
We’ll have more joy and peace than we ever thought possible, knowing that it really doesn’t get any better than living in the very heart of God’s love. There’s absolutely no greater good, no higher blessing than that.
And we’ll love other people much more freely, too, from an overflow of our blessing. Living in this state of grace, we’ll be able to accept one another’s flaws with greater charity and grace.
This is a dramatically powerful truth for each of us to own. This truth will change our lives if we’ll drink it in deeply: by our relationship with Jesus Christ we’re thoroughly blessed and cherished--absolutely, unconditionally and infinitely--by God, the great Lover of our souls.
Alleluia!
