Adam: God's Beloved

Adam could not speak, or even move without assistance. Gripped by frequent seizures, he spent his life in obscurity. In the eyes of the world he was a complete nobody. And yet, for Henri Nouwen he became "my friend, my teacher, and my guide." It was Adam who led Nouwen to a new understanding of his Christian faith and what it means to be Beloved of God.

In the final year before his death in 1996, Henri Nouwen had planned to write a book about the Apostle's Creed. But then the death of his friend Adam, a severely handicapped young man from the L'Arche Daybreak Community, changed his mind. He found that by reflecting on the story of Adam he had found a way of describing his own understanding of the Gospel message. In Adam, a book completed only weeks before his own death, Nouwen has left a fitting reflection of his own essential message and legacy.