Nouwen's journey

Christian Century, March 19, 1997 by Chris Glaser

The ornate chalice Henri Nouwen was given for his ordination in Holland almost 40 years ago serves as a metaphor in Can You Drink the Cup? for the traditional nature of his early priesthood. During Nouwen's funeral mass this past September, held in an unfinished cathedral outside Toronto, the chalice was used for the Eucharist alongside glass chalices, which represented his new understanding of ministry.

Can You Drink the Cup? demonstrates Nouwen's familiar method of spiritual elucidation: simple language and imagery revealing profound truth, personal experience breathing fresh life into the gospel story. As the last book that Nouwen lived to see released, it fittingly ties together both ends of his life: the events that led him into the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church and his vocation's culmination in working with mentally disabled adults. Glimpses of family life in Holland mix with his newfound family life in the L'Arche community in Toronto called Daybreak. Henri's daily celebration of the Eucharist led him from "the precious golden chalice that could only be touched and used by an ordained priest" to "large glass cups in which the wine can be seen and from which many can drink."

The title's biblical allusion, of course, is to the two disciples who ask (or, in the Matthean version Nouwen uses, whose mother asks on their behalf) that they might sit in places of honor at Jesus' left and right in his kingdom. Jesus asks them if they can drink the cup that he will have to drink.

Developing, as he often does, a threefold approach to the theme, Nouwen explores the nature of holding, lifting and drinking the cup of life. Holding the cup is savoring its sorrows and joys. Lifting the cup is reflecting on one's life, even as one offers it to others. Drinking the cup means intimacy and celebration, salvation and finally death--emptying the cup. But Nouwen assures us that as we empty the cup, "the One who has called us `the Beloved' . . . is filling it with everlasting life."

Nouwen's simple style of writing has occasionally left me wanting more depth and content, but this volume does not lack in either. (He said once that publishers were eager to have manuscripts he himself believed were far too short to be books.) Can You Drink the Cup? covers the span of Nouwen's understanding of spirituality, ministry and sacrament, and provides new glimpses of his early family life that illumine for the reader (and perhaps illumined for Henri) many of his later struggles. Nouwen's innocent youth, having "grown up as in a beautifully kept garden surrounded by thick hedges," hardly equipped him for the bumpy ride of his ministry with "the least of these," with whom he came to identify. And the expectations of his father, exemplified by the description of mealtime rules, must have contributed to Henri's struggle to be perfect to secure the approval of both father and Father God.

Nouwen's haunting melancholy is evident in this book as it is in others. He writes, for example:

But now I know that my sorrows are mine and will not

leave me. In fact I know they are very old and very deep

sorrows, and that no amount of positive thinking or

optimism will make them less. The adolescent struggle to

find someone to love me is still there; unfulfilled needs

for affirmation as a young adult remain alive in me. The

deaths of my mother and many family members and

friends during my later years cause me continual grief.

Beyond all that, I experience deep sorrow that I have

not become who I wanted to be, and that the God to

whom I have prayed so much has not given me what I

have most desired.

Yet his ministry at Daybreak proved redemptive. One among many parables of redemption that Nouwen relates involves Trevor, a member of the Daybreak community who was admitted to a mental hospital. Nouwen proposed a visit and the hospital staff eagerly arranged a luncheon to meet the famous author. To Nouwen's surprise, Trevor was not included because of a regulation forbidding patients to dine with staff. And no patient had ever been admitted to the Golden Room where they were to lunch.

Explaining that this rule contradicted the purpose of his visit, Nouwen insisted that Trevor be included. The staff agreed reluctantly. It was Trevor who broke the ice on this frosty occasion by offering a toast with his Coke. This story parallels the movement of the book and of Nouwen's ministry--a movement from an exclusive chalice to a common cup.

Not surprisingly, during the Eucharist at Henri's funeral mass the ecumenical community of Daybreak did not specify "Catholics only," despite the wishes of the church hierarchy. And Henri's burial was not in a Catholic cemetery as expected by the archdiocese but at the edge of a Catholic section of a mixed cemetery--further testimony of his identification with the marginalized and with the church universal.

During the interment service his family told the story of Henri's constantly reaching out as a baby, reaching out to be held, to be loved. The book released on the very day of his death serves as a final plaintive cry of one who hungered for love and intimacy, and yet was denied by vocation "a particular friendship," as it's called in Catholic seminaries. The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom is an eight-year-old "secret" journal exploring "spiritual imperatives" that Nouwen devised to recover from the emotional and spiritual anguish of a failed friendship. The strength of the passion recounted in the book suggests a profound experience of unrequited love. One does not need a poetic bent to note the dramatic irony of his heart giving out on the day of its publication.