October 13, 2003

"Empty of Self; Full of God's Love"

When an intercessor is really formed by the Spirit, the Sanctifier, he becomes very empty of himself.  There is very little self involved in his prayer.  St. John of the Cross talks about a poverty which leads to sanctity:  "nada, nada, nada," meaning "nothing, nothing, nothing."  When everything is totally given over for God, this is the summit of sanctity (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I,14,11).  Our whole focus is on God and His ministry, His wishes, and His vision.  So if we enter into that poverty of spirit where we don't have our own will or own spirit trying to get in God's way, then He hears us.  He sees us as empty and poor.  Mary was empty.  In her Magnificat she said, "The hungry he has given every good thing" (Lk 1:53).  If we come to prayer empty of ourselves, we'll go away filled and satisfied.

Intercessors are people full of God's love, full of God's power, obedient to the slightest movement of whatever He wants.  That's all He's looking for.  Jesus said, "Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness; they shall have their fill" (Mt 5:6).  This is the deepest desire of an intercessor-to become a saint.  St. Claude de la Columbiere used to pray everyday, "Oh Lord, make me a saint in spite of myself." We, too, should pray, "Make me a saint, Lord, in spite of myself!" 

As a convert, I had a lot of different thoughts of what a saint was because I would read of all these extreme things that the saints did, and I would try to imitate them.  So if it meant sleeping on coat hangers for awhile, that's what I did.  I read that the Cure d'Ars ate boiled potatoes every day, so that's what I did.  Another saint wore a hair shirt, so I wore a hair shirt.  I did everything I could to become a saint, but their sometimes extreme methods to achieve sanctity didn't seem to work out for me.  Then I read the Scripture and thought, "Oh, to be a saint I just have to be full of God's love" (see Eph 1:4).  Not full of self love, but full of God's love.  Then I understood that to be a saint it takes a little dying every day to myself and my needs and desires.  This is what God is asking of us.  We have to kind of make room within our heart every day for God's love to fill us because there is a lot of self love in all of us.  Once the Lord told me, "One of us has to go," and He said, "It's not going to be Me."

As we get rid of more and more of the selfish love within our hearts, then God's love can fill us and take over.  As we surrender and open ourselves to receive this love, then we can spend all day long giving it away.  Now we really have something to give to the world and to people-some of  God's love.  If we don't have a desire to become a saint, if we don't have a desire for intimacy with the Lord, then we won't understand why we should pray, and it's not our prayer that's the problem.  The problem is that we need that hunger and thirst for holiness.  When we read the lives of the saints, it was always this desire for union with God deep within their hearts that led their lives.  It was absolutely key.  So we may first have to check within our hearts to see if what we desire to become is what God desires us to become.  We can have desires in our hearts that are not of God.  They're our own desires but we have to let go of them and let the Lord plant His seeds in the vineyards of our hearts again.

Today it's very common to just accept and allow people and things to be as they are.  Everyone's doing their own thing.  There are many gray areas that we accept for the sake of compromise.  But Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me" (Mt 12:30).  There isn't any middle ground.  There isn't any gray area.  There isn't any compromise.  As intercessors we have to be careful of that.  We must know ourselves, and we have to check our motives, not only for what we do, but why we do something.  We must always make sure we are operating in Jesus' Kingdom.
 
Excerpt from Mother Nadine's Interceding with Jesus