Item 1687 - Peace, a gift we receive in prayer

11 p. of textual records

This item is an 11 page article by Henri Nouwen entitled, ‘Peace, A Gift We Receive in Prayer’, published in the New Oxford Review, Vol. LII, No. 7, September 1985, pp. 7 – 18. It is indicated that this is part 1 of a 3 part series entitled: A Spirituality of Peacemaking. Nouwen opens the article by asking, ‘Must it remain this way? Must war drums constantly disturb us? Must we hear over and over that we need more and stronger weapons to safeguard our values and our lives?’. Nouwen goes on to describe his own struggle from hesitation to describe himself as a peacemaker to an understanding of the need to do so. Nouwen states, ‘I hope to show how peacemaking can no longer be regarded as peripheral to being a Christian’. ‘Christians today … have to find the courage to make the word peace as important as the word freedom’. Nouwen then goes on at some length to speak about the peacemaker as one who prays. ‘Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking’. Nouwen describes peace as a divine gift which is received in prayer. It is in prayer, he suggests, that we find ourselves part of wounded humanity, one like those who create war. ‘Only when we are willing repeatedly to confess that we too have dirty hands even when we work for peace, can we fully understand the hard task of peacemaking’. Nouwen references the gospels and the words of Jesus about the prayer of the peacemaker and the receipt of the gift of love in the relationship with Jesus that comes from prayer. ‘Nothing is more important in peacemaking than that it flows from a deep and undeniable experience of love’. Nouwen describes prayer as ‘the first and foremost act of resistance against the arms race’. Nouwen concludes by referencing a story from one of the desert fathers and by stating, ‘ When we can see our own sinful self in a tranquil mirror and confess that we too are warmakers, then we may be ready to start walking humbly on the road to peace’.

Published in New Oxford Review 52, no. 7 (September 1985): 7-12, 14-18.
Item is 1 of a series of 3 articles. See also Published works series, items 1689 and 1691.
This item is published in a revised form in the following books: Nouwen, Henri: The Road to Peace, ed. John Dear, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1998 and Nouwen, Henri: Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 2005.

Added by L Joson, 10 November 2017