Item 1646 - Humility

1 p. of textual records

This item is a one page article by Henri Nouwen entitled, ‘Humility’ published in ‘America’, December 11, 1982, p. 372. The item is an excerpt of two entries from Nouwen’s book, ‘Gracias!.Nouwen opens the article by reporting something said by Tom Burns, a Maryknoller: ‘the poor consider as a gift what we claim as a right’. Nouwen goes on to say how we think in terms of our right to food, health, shelter and education which then leads us to see these as possessions to be defended. Nouwen then states that a ‘basic sense of gratitude is indeed one of the most visible characteristics of the poor, I have come to know’. In the second entry Nouwen asks why people become missioners. He suggests two of the most ‘damaging’ motives as guilt and desire to save. Nouwen identifies the great challenge which ‘is to live and work out of gratitude’. He follows this by suggesting that when the missioner comes to realize ‘that our guilt has been taken away and that only God saves, then we are free to serve, then we can live truly humble lives’.

Published in America 147, no. 19 (December 11, 1982): 372.
This item was subsequently published in Nouwen, Henri: Gracias!, A Latin American Journal, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N. Y., 1993. It was originally published by Harper & Row, New York, 1983.

Added by L Joson, 9 November 2017