May 30, 2005  

"Infused Wisdom"

Paul was a great mystic and missionary who followed in the footsteps of Jesus so closely.  Ephesians 3:17-19 is worth pondering.  This is where Paul must have realized, after all of his missions and all of his wonderful preaching, that there was an element that other people were still missing but which he had.  He said, "Now I kneel before the Father and I pray that Christ may find a dwelling place of faith in your hearts and that you will come to experience this love."  Paul realized he couldn't give it to anyone; it only comes from God.  But he knew he could ask the Father for this grace for others.  This is what intercessors are called to do.  We begin as contemplatives and experience God.  We can't give the experience, but we can pray that the Father will give these mystical touches to everyone.  God wants everybody to be contemplatives and enter into the full gifts of the Spirit, into this Illuminative Way.

There are always some blocks.  The blocks will come from us, not from God, and we'll begin to see them more deeply now.  Believe it or not, there is still pride.  It can still come in.  It will still try to rear its ugly head.  The way that it will do it now will change.  Ignatius cautions us about this in the discernment training because he said that as we grow, the enemy will change his tactics, and this is very, very true.  One of the ways that pride will show up now is that, "Oh, I am becoming so mystical now!  I know things you don't know.  I know things straight from God.  God speaks to me and ‘thus sayeth the Lord!'"  We can start dropping His name. 

I'll just share a story that comes to me.  It's about the power in that name.  I had never dropped His name.  I had never, ever said, "Jesus said" or "God said" or "Thus sayeth the Lord" until one day when this particular person was offering to buy Bellwether for us.  There happened to be five acres right next to Bellwether between what we call Mary's House and Bethany House.  We really needed those five acres, or we would have two houses and couldn't get between them.  We couldn't get back and forth.  But those five acres were not on the market, so I took that to the Lord and said, "I don't know, Lord.  They are not on the market.  What do You think?"  He said, "You need them.  You have to have them.  You absolutely have to have those five acres."  So I went to this beautiful friend, this businessman.  By this time he had called a meeting with the real estate people.  We were meeting in his home that night, sitting in a circle, and they said, "You know, that property is not for sale.  There is another buyer for that big house.  He'll buy that house without those little five acres.  They have a buyer and if you're not careful, you're going to lose this sale."  So they said to me one more time, "Why do you insist that you have to have those five acres?"  So, for the first time ever, I said, "Because God said."  You could have heard a pin drop.  Everybody just looked at their shoes, including me, and there was silence.  I thought it was forever, and finally this beautiful person that was going to buy Bellwether for us said to the rest of the business people, "Well, gentlemen, God said!"  So obviously we have the five acres that we needed.  In fact I called up the lady the next day to thank her because I said, "I know that property was not for sale and I know that you did have other plans for it and it was difficult for you to release that because you didn't have to.  Why did you?"  It was just beautiful.  She said, "Well, deep down inside I just felt God wanted you to have it."  So God takes care of things, but be careful when you drop that name.  It can really lead to pride - that "I'm self-sufficient now, I have this direct line.  I know things."  It's spiritual pride.  Spiritual pride is always more deadly and is more difficult to spot than pride.  Pride is bad enough but spiritual pride is worse because it is camouflaged with spiritual things, good things, and it will show up in our prayer life.

Another hindrance to the Illuminative Way and starting to get these infused gifts directly from God is that we can fall into a trap thinking we are more advanced than we really are.  We saw this in the Charismatic Renewal when we came home from the cloister.  It was new life everywhere, it was wonderful, and people were experiencing God.  You remember those experiences yourself.  Everything was new.  The sun was shining brighter and the sky was bluer and the grass was greener.  I mean, it was just wonderful, but the mistake that started to creep in, at least in the group that we were involved in, was that everyone kind of thought they were in the Seventh Mansion because of the experience.  This can happen when we start receiving this New Life.  There are blocks and dangers here.  We have to be careful because God was saying to the Renewal, as He says to us, "Oh no!  There is still a process for full marriage."  This is like the honeymoon.  This is the beginning but it isn't the fullness yet.  We need to get even more serious; we need to get into commitment. 

When we start experiencing God in this mystical way we can, if we're not careful, become discouraged because He will start to withdraw some of the consolations from time to time because He doesn't want us to stay there.  God never wants us to stay at any one place for too long.  In talking with mountain climbers one time, I realized that they go up the mountain at a steady, slow pace, but they are always moving forward.  They might stop to rest briefly, but not too long or they may get discouraged and want to go back down. 

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "New Heart,"  Omaha, NE, 2004.