November 6, 2006

"Chalice of Our Awareness"

Our past actually becomes the chalice of our awareness of God.  The psalmist must have known this. He sings, "God, you are my God.  I long for You; my soul thirsts for You.  I remember You upon my bed at night.  You are my helper.  Yes, upon Your wings, in the shadow of Your wings, I shout for joy."  His memory was taking him back more and more into the presence of God.  As we enter more fully into the presence of God, and into the memory which He brings forth in us, we will find that we will begin to sing more and more that new song. Our memory will begin to gain more and more access to the awareness of God's presence within, of what God has done, of what He is doing even now because He is in the now. We will be able to sing a Magnificat to Him everyday because we will begin to recognize more and more that He has always been with us - always.  We do not always remember it,  but as we go into His presence, He will ignite those memories; He will let us remember.

Once I was in Medjugorji on my birthday and Our Lady gave me a beautiful insight.   She let me understand that when we are conceived in our mother's wombs, there is an element of time in which no one knows we are there.  We can experience loneliness right then.  We can experience rejection and we can hold that memory in our little hearts.  Often times, we do.  We must go clear back and pray for that moment of our conception or maybe that first two or three weeks of our lives when our mothers were pregnant before they even knew it. We must pray for the healing of our memories during that time. It can be a beautiful time then.  God can bring back to our memory what really happened.  We did not remember that He was there.  He was always there and He will let us tap into what He knew in that time in the womb.

All of these past wounds are obstacles to our faith. God wants to heal them.  He tells us, "My power is best in weakness."  When we are in touch with our woundedness, with our frailties, with our imperfections we are never more weak.  That is precisely the time when God is never more strong or more near.  The source of these blocks may be fear or shame before others; it might be that we want to compensate, that we always have to be first. We may have envy.  The Lord will start to show us all these things and we will begin to realize, "There is something going on deep in my heart, which is causing me to act or react this way."  These are the things that we want to take to the Lord.

To accomplish this, the first step is the individual prayer.  We need to ask God, "Lord come and heal whatever is the source of this reaction.  Come and heal my heart so that it can be filled with the Trinity and I can magnify God."   The second step is always confession.  There is a particularly beautiful power in sacramental Confession.  It is very, very healing.  The third step is community, whose deepest source is always in the presence of God.  "God so loved the world, that He gave us His only son." He wants His Son to come in as The Healer and to heal all of the memories that are blocking our full receptivity, our full openness, our freedom and our ability to reflect God.

Let God heal.  Do not repress. Whatever you do, do not repress.  Whatever might come up, take it to the Lord.  As intercessors our little motto is, "Don't take it personally.  Take it to Jesus."   We have many hurts. We are people who live out the Calvary experience. This is the mystery that we celebrate today in the Church because this is where the power and the wisdom are. There will be the rejections, there will be the hate, there will be gossips, there will be everything that Jesus underwent but we do not take it personally, we take it to Jesus.

Remember that God loves us as we are.  We do not have to hide like Adam and Eve did; we do not have to keep wrapping the fig leaves around ourselves anymore.  We want Jesus to touch us right now as He finds us today.  Also remember that God will not violate our own free will.  It is necessary to invite Him to enter into our hearts and to touch any painful memories we have stored there.  If we can recall nothing, then we can still ask the Holy Spirit to direct Jesus' healing love to any past experiences, which may now need to be touched.  The Lord does not usually just erase traumas from our lives. But, when He came forth from the tomb, God transformed them so they no longer have the power to keep us in bondage.  We can remember them.  We can remember what happened but we can do so without the negative feelings of fear, of anger of sadness, of guilt or pain.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Lady Wisdom Sings Her Own Praises," Omaha, NE 2005