The 2022 edition of this text celebrates the 25th anniversary of its original publication, and includes a new afterword by Robert Ellsberg, who was deeply involved in its genesis and publication in 1997. This is a much beloved, and much reviewed, book, which frees me to offer a perhaps more personal reading.

We are invited to walk alongside Henri Nouwen as he is initiated into the life of a l'Arche community in Toronto, and particularly into the life of one of the core members Adam Arnett. We start with Henri telling us about the death of Adam, and the grace that prompted him to see Adam’s life and their friendship in a new way, which brought him also to a more profound understanding of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Though I did not know either, I take the liberty of referring to Adam and to Henri, as a way of honoring the deeply personal style of this narrative.) I was captured by the structure of the book, from its opening pages about Adam’s death, through the story of Adam and Henri’s friendship, to its last lines: “The story is told. I hope and pray that many will read it and understand” (128). While this may not have been the author’s explicit intention, it reminds me of the structure of John’s Gospel, from its opening testimony to its final chapter (Jn 21:24 “It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true”), in which we are able to see the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through the eyes of those who knew him and believed. Henri explicitly notes that it was Jesus' story which allowed him to understand Adam's story (17). His testimony in this book encourages us to contemplate the identity of Christ and the character of discipleship, and to consider the nature of ecclesia and community. Henri sees the vulnerability of Adam in and through the light of the wounded and vulnerable Christ (30), who became man for us and suffered the Passion for our salvation.

As Henri tells us more about Adam’s life, we come to appreciate the profound love shared by the Arnett family. We feel their joy and join their celebrations. We empathize with their concerns as they discover that Adam is having seizures and was not able to speak. We learn too of the ways that Adam was perceived and treated negatively by others, including by the very communities and services that should have been a source of help to him and his family. Adam did not go to school until age 10, for instance, and was rarely asked to other students’ birthday parties. He did not receive the sacraments of Eucharist and Confirmation with others his age, although the book notes that he did make his First Communion later. A medication error by doctors further diminished Adam’s capacity to get around by himself. During a five-year period, Adam lived in a chronic care hospital, which Henri aptly described as a time in the wilderness, an exile dominated by routine care by paid staff who did not make time to provide anything but the most minimal necessities. Even these were not always addressed; in one instance, Adam had a seizure and suffered a serious injury which went unnoticed by staff. Wolf Wolfensberger described this cycle of harm and injustice as wounding, and it is interesting to note that Wolfensberger developed this insight in part through his own encounters with l'Arche (see The Theological Voice of Wolf Wolfensberger [NY: Haworth Pastoral Press, 2001]).

Henri’s narrative makes present to us the importance of the Church's teaching on the inviolable dignity and full humanity of each person, as well as the preferential option for the poor (45). Adam and others may not be able to reason about Christ, but they can and do know and desire the love of God. I point readers to a compelling article by Miguel Romero entitled “Profound Cognitive Impairment, Moral Virtue, and Our Life in Christ” (Church Life, Vol. 4, No. 4 [2014]: 79-94).

If taken out of context, some of the descriptions of Adam come close to portraying him as an angel or someone outside the reach of sin. This may explain Henri’s repeated clarifications that Adam is not angelic or some special creature. It may also speak to the paucity of our language and experience when it comes to describing love, friendship and mutual care, including in the lives of our sisters and brothers with significant impairments.

This 25th anniversary edition is very much still worth reading, or re-reading, sharing and discussing, particularly if brought into conversation with contemporary writers and thinkers. I recommend that the text could profitably be read within and by a parish community, as an opportunity to clarify its own understanding and beliefs about God. A shared reading and discernment could help a parish to accept its ecclesial responsibility to foster a more active participation by and with parishioners with impairments and their families, in a spirit of fraternity and mutuality, as a single flock. Interested readers may wish to study the USCCB document Welcome and Justice for Persons with Disabilities (1998) as well as the revised Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities (2017).

Readers picking up this book may find it helpful to simultaneously meditate on the parable of the last judgment in Mt 25. Henri invites us to recognize and appreciate the “beauty of caregiving,” (59), and just as importantly, to understand the art of caring for others as an encounter with our Lord, and as something within our reach, not far away or inaccessible. It is in and through his mutual relationship with Adam, a developing friendship of virtue, that Henri comes to a more profound understanding of Christ and to experience a deep peace (48). He slowly realizes that they are helping one another in different ways; the beauty of caregiving is not unidirectional. We are asked to consider the question of who our ‘Adam’ is (17), so to speak, of how we can see the face of Jesus (55) through helping and being helped. Adam was no longer a stranger (49) nor a client, but a friend, someone that Henri conversed with, though Adam spoke not a word. Part of the invaluable legacy of this book is that we are invited to see that similar opportunities and friendships await us in every parish.