Walk with Jesus: Stations of the Cross
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Helen David (Illustrator)
Orbis Books
ISBN 9781626981164
eISBN 9780883446669
ASIN B00Q5C2EAQ
First some background between 2001 and 2006 I read about a dozen volumes by Henri Nouwen. My Mentor at the time was a huge fan, and have a large print of the Rembrandt print from The Prodigal Son in his office and spoke on the volume and parable often. When I returned to the Catholic Church, I went on a retreat and the spiritual director advised against reading any Nouwen or Merton. 19 years later on retreat at the same retreat house a different priest recommend a Nouwen volume. I had never read this one previously. In 2025 I picked it up and read and prayer through it during Lent.
The description of this volume states:
“Inspired by the drawings of Sister Helen David, Henri Nouwen sees in these images the ongoing passion of Christ in our world today. Stark and moving, her drawings--of an abandoned child, of a political prisoner behind bars, a peasant burdened by a load of firewood, a mother grieving for he murdered son--still do not lead us to despair. Rather, as Nouwen notes, they "help us unite our own broken humanity with the humanity of the men, women, and children portrayed . . . . This union become possibly through the suffering and risen body of Jesus. In and through Jesus, our world can become one because in this divine love he embraces all of us, and desires that we all be one, as he and his father are one."”
The chapters in this volume are:
Publisher's Note for the 25th Anniversary Edition
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: I Walk With Jesus
I. Jesus Is Condemned
II. Jesus Carries His Cross
III. Jesus Falls for the First Time
IV. Jesus Meets Mary
V. Simon Helps Jesus Carry His Cross
VI. Jesus Meets Veronica
VII. Jesus Falls for the Second Time
VIII. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
IX. Jesus Falls for the Third Time
X. Jesus Is Stripped
XI. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
XII. Jesus Dies on the Cross
XIII. Jesus Is Taken from the Cross
XIV. Jesus Is Laid into the Grave
XV. Jesus Rises from the Dead
Concluding Prayer
A Sample station is:
“III
Jesus Falls for the First Time
This little Vietnamese boy is left behind. Why? Maybe his parents were killed, abducted, or put in camps. Maybe they tried to escape from the enemy and got caught in an ambush. Maybe they were boat people who drowned. Maybe, maybe…but their child is left alone. As I look into these eyes gazing into an empty future, I see the eyes of millions of children crushed by the powers of darkness. This small, tender child needs to be held, needs to be hugged, kissed, cuddled. He needs to feel the strong, loving hands of his father, hear the tender words of his mother, and see the eyes of those who say: “How beautiful you are.” Where will this boy be safe? Where will he know that he is truly loved? Where can he run to when he gets scared and confused? Where can he let his tears flow freely, his pain be received, his fearful dream be dispelled? Who tickles his feet? Who squeezes his hand? Who rubs his cheeks? He sits there, vulnerable, lonely, forgotten. He is left behind by a humanity that can no longer hold on to its future.
All over the world, children fall under the weight of violence, war, corruption, and human anguish. They are hungry, hungry for affection and food. In the cold halls of institutions, they sit…waiting for someone to pay attention. They sleep with strangers who use them to satisfy their own desires. They roam the streets of the big cities, trying to survive alone or in small bands. There are thousands, yes, millions of them all over the world. They have not heard the voice that says: “You are my beloved, on you my favor rests” (Luke 3:22).
Nowhere is our fallen humanity so painfully set before us as in these children. They reveal our sins to us. Abandoned and alone, they tell us that we have lost the grace to love our own.
What will become of these children when they grow older and become the men and women of the future. Will they grab the gun in a desperate search for revenge? Will they withdraw into lifelong silence in the wards of mental hospitals, or be locked behind bars as dangerous criminals? Will they become terrorists, gang leaders, drug smugglers, pimps, or prostitutes? Or will they discover that beyond and behind all human manipulations there are hands that hold them safe and offer a love that has no conditions?
Jesus fell under his cross. He continues to fall. Jesus is not the conquering hero who undergoes suffering with staunch determination and an iron will. No, he who was born as a child of God and a child of Mary, adored by shepherds and wise men, never became the proud self-possessed leader who wanted to lead humanity to the great victory over the powers of darkness. When he had grown into maturity, he humbled himself by joining penitent men and women and receiving baptism in the river Jordan. It was then that he heard that voice deeply entering his heart: “This is my Son, the Beloved, my favor rests on Him” (Matt. 3: 17). That voice carried him through life and shielded him from bitterness, jealousy, resentment, and revenge. He always remained a child and said to his followers: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Jesus is the innocent child falling under the heavy burden of the cross of human anguish—powerless, weak, and very vulnerable. But there we can touch the mystery of the compassionate heart of God that embraces all children, around as well as within us.
I know that I am a child, a child who, underneath all my accomplishments and successes, keeps crying out to be held safe and loved without conditions. I also know that losing touch with my child is losing touch with Jesus and all who belong to him. Each time I touch my own child, I touch my powerlessness and my fear of being left alone with no one to give me a safe place. Jesus falls beneath the cross to allow me to reclaim my child, that place in me where I am out of control and in desperate need of being lifted up and reassured. The abandoned children of the world are in me. Jesus tells me not to be afraid, to face them in my heart and suffer with them. He wants me to discover that beyond all emotions of rejection and abandonment there is love, real love, lasting love, love that comes from a God who became flesh and who will never leave his children alone.”
I highlighted a number of passages while working through this volume. Some of them are:
“Throughout his many books Henri Nouwen promoted a central, consistent theme: that the Christian life is a matter of following in the footsteps of Jesus.”
“In particular, he came to see how the suffering of Jesus is reflected in the contemporary sufferings of those on the margins.”
“Walk with Jesus, a book that reflected Henri's journey up to that point, and one of the first books he wrote in Toronto, had a special place in his heart.”
“These reflections, made in response to Sister Helen David's Stations of the Cross, were written mainly during a three-and-a-half week stay at York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill, Ontario.”
“I have looked long and intensely at these paintings and have come to realize, more and more, that the suffering as well as the joy that we witness in so many countries today are nothing less than the ongoing revelation of the unfathomable mystery of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.”
“It has been a real grace for me to reflect on Sister Helen David's Stations. What most moved me was that these Stations were created not to make us feel guilty about human suffering far away from us, but to help us unite our own broken humanity with the humanity of the men, women, and children portrayed in these paintings.”
“There is immense pain in the wide world around us; there is immense pain in the small world within us. But all pain belongs to Jesus and is transformed by him into glorified wounds that allow us to recognize him as our risen Lord.”
“But what does it mean to walk with the poor? It means to recognize my own poverty: my deep inner brokenness, my fatigue, my powerlessness, my mortality. It is there that I am connected with the earth; there that I am truly humble. Yes, it is there that I enter into solidarity with all who walk the earth and discover that I, too, am loved as a very fragile, precious person.”
“As I walk the long, painful journey toward the cross, I must pause on the way to wash my neighbors’ feet. As I kneel before my brothers and sisters, wash their feet, and look into their eyes, I discover that it is because of my brothers and sisters who walk with me that I can make the journey at all.”
“He wants me to discover that beyond all emotions of rejection and abandonment there is love, real love, lasting love, love that comes from a God who became flesh and who will never leave his children alone.”
“To receive help, support, guidance, affection, and care may well be a greater call than that of giving all these things because in receiving I reveal the gift to the givers and a new life together can begin.”
“In every part of his body he feels the pain of hard labor, and, as he closes his eyes and holds his hand before his face, he sees nothing but an empty future. His heart becomes very dark. He wonders why he goes on living when all his efforts come to nothing. He sees himself as a failure, and he blames himself for not being the husband, the father, and the friend he had hoped to be.”
“The hands of the poor begging for food, the hands of the lonely calling for simple presence, the hands of the children asking to be lifted up and held, the hands of the sick hoping to be touched, the hands of the unskilled wanting to be trained—all these hands are the hands of the fallen Jesus waiting for others to come and give him their hand.”
“Jesus bore our suffering. The stripped body of Jesus reveals to us the immense degradation that human beings suffer all through the world, at all places and in all times.”
“But Jesus points in the other direction. Life is an increasing call to let go of desires, of success and accomplishment, to give up the need to be in control, to die to the illusion of greatness. The joy and peace that Jesus offers is hidden in the descending way of the cross. There lie hope, victory, and new life, but they are given to us where we are losing all.”
“People are dying every day, every hour, every minute. They die suddenly or slowly. They die on the streets of big cities or in comfortable homes. They die in isolation or surrounded by friends and family. They die in great pain or as if falling asleep. They die in anguish or in peace. But all of them die alone, facing the unknown. Dying is indeed a reality of daily life.”
“We all must die. And we all will die alone. No one can make that final journey with us. We have to let go of what is most our own and trust that we did not live in vain.”
“To love truly is to be willing to embrace sorrow. To love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength is to expose your heart to the greatest sorrow a human being can know.”
“This Holy Saturday is the most quiet of all days. Its quiet connects the first covenant with the second, the people of Israel with the not-yet-knowing world, the Temple with the new worship in the Spirit, the sacrifices of blood with the sacrifice of bread and wine, the Law with the Gospel. This divine silence is the most fruitful silence that the world has ever known. From this silence, the Word will be spoken again and make all things new.”
“The long palm leaves that they flourish manifest their sense of victory and triumph. Yes, there is sadness, but gladness too. Yes, there is grief, but joy as well. Yes, there is fear, but also love. Yes, there is hard work, but celebration follows. And, yes, there is death, but also resurrection.”
“I look at you, and you open my eyes to the ways in which your passion, death, and resurrection are happening among us every day.”
“Thank you, Lord, for speaking to me. I do so desire to let you heal my wounded heart and, from there, to reach out to others close by and far away.”
“As your passion, death, and resurrection continue in history, give me the hope, the courage, and the confidence to let your heart unite my heart with the hearts of all your suffering people, and so become for us the divine source of new life.”
I hope that sample station and those quotes give you a feel for this volume. I was able to read it in an afternoon and pray through it. I might work for a retreat but do not see it working in a normal parish setting. It is however great for personal reflection.
I really enjoyed this volume and it was an excellent return to Nouwen’s works. It has a much deeper Memento Mori feel about it than some stations; as can be seen by some of the quotes above. I can recommend it easily.
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2025 Catholic Reading Plan!
Books by Henri J.M. Nouwen:
Intimacy
Creative Ministry
With Open Hands
Pray to live: Thomas Merton: a contemplative critic
Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
Aging: The Fulfillment of Life
Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
The Genesee Diary
The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society
Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation
In Memoriam
The Way of the Heart
A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee
Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life
Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life
A Letter of Consolation
Gracias: A Latin American Journal
The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ
Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective
Behold the Beauty of the Lord
Letters to Marc About Jesus
The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey
Henri Nouwen (Modern Spiritual Masters): Writings Selected With an Introduction by Robert A. Jonas
In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership
Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader
Beyond the Mirror: Reflections on Death and Life
The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
Show Me the Way: Daily Lenten Readings
Here and Now: Living in the Spirit
Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring
The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom
Can You Drink the Cup?
Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
Adam: God's Beloved
Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year
The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life
A Spirituality of Fundraising (Henri Nouwen Spirituality)
Turn My Mourning into Dancing
Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith
Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit
Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
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