Item 1694 - The spirituality of peacemaking

3 p. of textual records

This item is a 3 page article by Henri Nouwen entitled, ‘The Spirituality of Peacemaking’ published in The Lutheran, February 5, 1986, pp. 12 – 14. Nouwen writes of 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 concludes, ‘Prayer – living in the presence of God – is the most radical peace action we can imagine’.

Published in The Lutheran 24, no. 3 (February 5, 1986): 12-14.
A longer version is published in the New Oxford Review, September 1985. See item 1687.
Item is 1 of a series of 3 articles. See also Published works series, items 1695 and 1696.
Although it is stated that this is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, Peacework, a book titled Peacemaking or Peacework was not published. However, the book was published under the title A Spirituality of Peacemaking (see Manuscripts series for drafts, file 26, boxes 8 and 9).
A revised and longer version of this material is to be found in: Nouwen, Henri, The Road to Peace, ed. John Dear, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1998 and Nouwen, Henri, Peacework, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 2005.

Added by L Joson, 10 November 2017