The Inner Source - a Henri Nouwen Lecture

Lecture 3, 1 December 2001
by Anselm Grün, Germany

Excerpt from THE SPIRITUAL PATH AS PATH TO HEALING

"Many people nowadays complain about stress, burnout and exhaustion. For me stress is always a spiritual problem. We try and manage by using our own strength. Prayer is the path to the inner spring. Inside us the spring of the Holy Spirit flows over. If I am in contact with this spring, if I work from within it, I can perform many tasks without getting exhausted. My internal spring is eternal, because it is spiritual.

"Many people are exhausted because they have a harmful lifestyle. They work with the motto: "Hopefully I do everything well. Hopefully I don't make any mistakes. Hopefully we won't get into conflict". With such life patterns we are soon out of breath and burned out. According to Evagrius Ponticus prayer leads us to the inner place of contemplation and peace. Evagrius calls this place "God's place" because God himself lives there, and "Jerusalem", because it is a place of peace. The mystic tells us that there is already a place in us where there is complete peace, where God is already in us. But we are separated from this quiet place, separated by the internal and external noise of our worries and problems which lie like a thick layer of concrete between our heart and this internal place of peace and quiet.

"Prayer penetrates this concrete layer and enters this internal place. In this place where God lives, other people don't have entry and we are not touched by opinions and condemnation, neither by desires and expectations, rejection and hurt. There we are whole and complete. In spite of our fears, we may experience that in our inner self we are whole and complete. That experience is indestructible. The pain only touches our emotions, but not our true identity, not the inner reflection God has formed of us.

"Prayer is the way to the inner place of wellbeing. In the Eastern church especially, the Jesus prayer is the path to the depth of the heart where Christ himself lives. It is a place of gentleness and compassion, of love and freedom. Our own guilt has no entry. In this place we are blameless and pure, without sin. On December 8 the church tells us this in our celebrations of Mary of Immaculate Conception, who is an example for us through Jesus Christ who delivered us."