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She told me a bit about being with Henri through a very difficult period in his life. But it wasn’t until I read his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, that I was able to piece together a more complete story of how she helped Henri Nouwen through that experience.
Henri Nouwen writes that he had identified with the good son in Jesus’ parable - he was the oldest child in his family, became a priest, was highly successful, teaching at Harvard, Yale and Notre Dame. But later in life he began to see himself as the younger brother - broken, in need of his father’s mercy. At times, these two sense of himself seemed to be in conflict.
It was Sue who suggested to him that God was calling him to be the father in the story; to accept and love both those aspects of himself - the elder son and the younger son. What the world needed was for Henri to see himself as the father, not one of the sons. This interpretation of the parable challenges me to move beyond a sense of myself as good or bad, beyond moral judgements, toward a calling to live with compassion not only for my own mixed up nature, but for yours as well.