September 1, 2008

One of Us Has to Go

In the Gospel of Luke we see Jesus healing all kinds of people who were living their lives in desperation.  They were waiting for the “Healer.”  They wanted to be open to new life.  They were ready to surrender.  Just the other day, we heard the beautiful Gospel story of the blind beggar.  He wanted to see.  There many ways to be blind, as we know.  In the Gospels we see an open invitation for God to come right into people’s lives because they were already in that state of surrender.  Then, in that deep need the process of inner healing begins.  We must get in touch with our need.  It is not an option.   We must ask, “What do I need the most?”  We all have lots of needs.  But once I begin to realize that I need God,  I need His healing touch,  I need His love and His presence, I need Him in whatever way that need appears, that is the very authentic beginning of healing.  In other words, it is out of poverty that riches come.  It is out of poverty that Our Lady became pregnant.  She was hungry; she was empty and God filled her.  

When we speak of surrender, we have to get in touch with the fact that we need to be in another place than where we are now.   That will motivate us to try to make the crossover and surrender.  So we do not want to live under the illusion that this surrender is just a one time thing.  After one surrender comes another challenge, then comes another area of bondage, and still another area where I find that I am resisting the healing and the surrender, surrender, surrender.  It is ongoing and we find that we have to yield in many, many areas.  God will keep prompting us to yield, to yield, to yield. 

It can be something as simple as an unchristian attitude.  Maybe it was an action or a thought.  It just wasn’t the most loving thing to say or to think or to do.  This may trigger something within my inner child and I reacted in an unloving way.  If we are not reacting with love, we know that our actions are coming out of something within our inner child that needs healing.   God is perfect love.  If we are living in a state of total poverty, then we are going to be filled with His perfect love.  If we are not giving and receiving love, that is the best criteria for determining our need for healing.  If that is not happening that is saying, “I am not really poor enough yet.  I am still hanging on to something.  There are some areas or an area in which I am not fully surrendered.  If I was fully surrendered, God would be filling that place and I would be giving and reacting out of love.  It is a little way in which we can kind of spot the fact that there are  areas within me right now, that are not fully Christian.  I am not fully like the Christ Himself. 

God is going to show each of us in different ways.  It will be a struggle.  You probably already know that.  It is a struggle ultimately between God and me.  It is not about other people.  It is inner – it is about me. 

Once I was going through a big struggle in my prayer life because nothing was going my way - nothing.  I thought, “Well God is just giving me the silent treatment.”  Have you ever experienced times in prayer where nothing happens, where He never speaks?  We may think, “Why should I keep showing up?”  He is not!”  I was going through this struggle and it was between Jesus and me at that time.  I decided, “I am just not going to talk to You then, since You are not talking to me.”  But He did speak and what He said was “I want to live. I want to live My life fully in you and you are not letting Me.  You want to live your own way, your own life.  I want to live My life within you so there are things in you that have to go.  Surrender that to Me.”  And He said, “You know, there isn’t room here for both of us.  One has to go and it is not going to be Me.” 

That is what I think He is saying to us.  He wants to live.  “I live now, no not I, but the Christ”  (Gal 2:20).  He wants to live in that beautiful incarnational way within us. 

Excerpt from Mother Nadine’s, “The Healing Power of Surrender,” Omaha, 2006