May 12, 2008

Memories

Our faith is very much founded on what we remember.  It is also founded on the future, which brings hope because that has to do with memory too.   Now, like everything else, there are obstacles which appear when we try to recall a memory.  What are the obstacles to some of our memory of the past?  The greatest obstacle to our ability to remember appears when the memory is protecting itself from the wounds it carries within it.  It is protecting itself.  The wounds inflicted by others, and perhaps the effects of our own sin, still lie hidden in our inner being.  These wounds are like black and blue marks on our psyche.  They are areas too sensitive to touch and they can impede our movement into deeper union with God.  Our Lord wants to heal these wounds either by taking them completely away, which is what He normally and most often does, or by taking away the fear of them - the fear of them - so that we can live in a simple acceptance of our weaknesses and limitations.  No matter what the source of the wounds, they can be means of union with Jesus, whose wounds still shine gloriously in heaven.  Even now, our weakness can make the glory of God more manifest.  Saint Paul, himself, pleaded with the Lord to take away whatever the thorn was which he carried.  Remember what God said.  "My grace is enough for you.  My power is at best in weakness."  God may totally remove the memory of the pain, whatever the wound, so that we can come more fully into His presence or He will remove the fear of that memory, which will still bring us into a loving relationship with Him.

In the healing of our memories, the source of some of the blocks that we may notice in ourselves, might be fear of God.  It might be shame before others; it might be some of our attempts to compensate for these feelings.  Whatever it is, it can all be traced to the unhealed wounds left in our unhealed being by incidents of our pasts.

Some of these events of our past may be conscious; we may remember them.  These, too, need to be brought into God's healing light.  Some may be kind of half conscious; we get vague intuitions when something happens.  I might wonder to myself, "This thing seems kind of familiar." But I do not yet have the full conscious recall of it.  Many memories may not be conscious to us at all; they might be totally locked away in the subconscious. 

At this point, let me mention that, when you are praying with someone, God may not bring the subconscious memory into the consciousness of that person.  He may not bring it to you either.  That is all right.  He does not have to bring the memory to either of you.  God is God.  He can heal in the subconscious as well as the semi-conscious or in the total conscious.  But you will know that you are healed because you will react quite differently.  Have you ever had something happen, which made you think "My, that does not seem to bother me anymore.  Really, it used to kind of get to me."  That means there is a healing that has taken place.  Those of us who minister to people see this happen so often.  God never surfaces it.  He has reasons.  It might be that if He surfaced a memory, it could affect other people that are in that person's life.  It could cause other wounds, other hurts or divisions.  God has His own reasons.  Often it is that He simply wants to heal.  He wants us to be free.

How does one proceed, then, to allow the Lord to heal these memories?  There is more than one way.  I am going to suggest three. The first step is individual prayer and the second is confession, which achieves a particular power if it is Sacramental.  The third is community, whose deepest source and most powerful presence is the Eucharist itself. 

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "The Healing of Memories," Omaha, 2004

May 5, 2008

The Sacrament of God's Presence

There comes moments in our lives when those experiences which have hurt us or have twisted us somehow, must also be brought to awareness and healed so that our prayer life may deepen and we become more conscious of God's presence. Our unhealed memories, our unhealed emotions, are brought into this awareness dimension.  This will definitely deepen our prayer life and our union with God, because we will be more conscious of God's presence.  Simply put, this process is called the healing of memories.  Some call it the healing of our inner being. 

Memory is actually a sacrament of God's presence.  Most of you have heard that before.  Memory is practicing the presence of God, the sacrament of the present moment.  Our memory serves to retain the wounds of the past that are imperfectly healed.  But our memory also carries, deep within it, the effects of God's actions in our lives, those moments in our lives that, in a special way, make up my personal salvation history.  Memory is very important. When we allow ourselves to enter, once again, into those deep recesses of our being where the awareness of God's action is still a living thing, we put our present experience into perspective. We are putting it right into God.  Deeper than this, the memory, this action of God, is living in us as a sacrament of His presence.  Because of that, we, through the memory - through the union - are entering into the knowledge of where we come from.  Our past, in other words, actually becomes like a chalice containing our awareness of God.  Isn't that beautiful?  It is so important that we get in touch with this.

There is a beautiful Psalm - Psalm 63 - in which the psalmist is saying, "O God, You are my God!  For You my soul thirsts.  For You I long.  For You I pine. " Then the psalmist says, "Upon my bed I remember you."  He remembers.  When we remember, when that memory clicks in, it brings us right into the presence of this beautiful God.  He says, "I remember You in the watches of the night.  I dwell in You."  The psalmist knew that.  Through memory he is coming right into God's presence.  "Yes, You are my help.  In the shadow of Your wings, I shout for joy."  He was coming right into the presence of the Spirit - right into the presence of God.  The remembering of God really brings us to songs of joy, tremendous joy.  We also find ourselves protected in this vast expanse of His overshadowing wings.  That is what contemplation is all about - coming into that phenomenal presence of God.   In this sense, our memory is our access to awareness of the presence of God.   We become aware of Him who has made us and saved us.  We become aware of Him for whom there is no time and who, at this very moment, is holding us in existence and giving us His life.  Remember: He is the God who was, who is and who is to come.  He is always present.  So when are brought, through memory, into His presence, we enter the tremendous vastness of the memory of ourselves.  Read about that in Revelation 1:4. 

When we remember what God has done we become aware of the effects of His saving act and how it still exists in us by the mystery of His presence.  There will always be mystery.  Through what God has done, we can speak to Him who is present.  And when we speak to Him about what He has done, we are actually in His presence.  We know, as Saint Paul said, that we shall see Him as He is.  Even when we see Him face-to-face it will still be present, won't it?   Even though we can remember things, which happened previously, and we can remember the whole bridge which we took to get to that memory - even though we remember everything - it will always be in the present moment.  We will recognize God.  We will recognize that He is a God who has always been with us.  He has always been with us.  It is extremely important to remember this.  So many times in inner healing, we find ourselves asking God, "Where were You?  Where were You?" That question causes a lot of pain.  Through our inner healing we are going to come into the awareness that He is always present as He heals our memories. He was there then and He is here now. 

Now, Jesus gave a command at the Last Supper and we hear it all the time when we go to Mass.  It is in connection with the Eucharist but it also applies to the memory.  Remember Jesus said, "Do this in memory of Me."  "Do this in memory of Me."  You may want to ponder that.   He is calling us into His tremendous presence, past, future and right now.  "Do this in memory of Me."  He will take us into His presence and into His whole life. In other words, "Remember Me."  "Remember Me, so that you will always be in union with Me and you will always be aware of My presence within you."

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "The Healing of Memories," Omaha, 2004

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April 28, 2008 

The Gift of Awareness

Our Memory is a very mysterious thing.  St. Augustine saw man as an image of the Trinity. He teaches that in man's interior being there are the three realities: memory, understanding and will.  Memory is compared to God the Father, because it is an image of eternity.  It is the point out of which springs love which has no beginning.  Memory, according to St. Augustine, is equated with God - with God's love.  It always was, it always is, and it always will be. 

Memory plays a tremendously important role in the growth of our spirituality.  In fact, he said that the growth of spirituality and the growth of memory really go together.  For example, in the awareness of myself, I know myself to be the same person who yesterday lived through a certain series of experiences.  I answer to the same name. That, he tells us, is the reason for memory: I can remember who I am.  I remember what I did yesterday, believe it or not.  But this awareness of ourselves always involves knowing where we come from, not only in the sense of our past but in the sense of our source - our Creator - from whom we really come.  We know that we come from God.  He made us and at this moment is present to us.  He is holding us in existence though we are most often unaware of it.  It is truly a shame that we are so unaware of the fact that God is holding us in existence at this very moment - at every moment.  Our growth in spirituality is a growth in memory.  It is an increasing awareness of where we come from.  So, in other words, as my memory becomes more healed, more whole, I will become more aware of God.  That is going to help my growth in spirituality and union with the Lord. 

When I was in the cloister and we were all baptized in the Holy Spirit, we were all, already, women of prayer. It was not like we were having our first experience of God.  Still, the experience we all had, right across the board, was this incredible awareness of God.  He was touching our memory right then and bringing us into this tremendous awareness.  I really saw that awareness is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  It is probably one of the most beautiful gifts that we received when we were baptized in the Holy Spirit.  It is a gift for which we need to pray daily - the gift of being aware.  It will trigger my memory and my memory, then, will connect me with the One of whom I am aware - of God.  It will bring about deeper union with Him. 

We used to talk among ourselves in the cloister and we would wonder, "Why isn't this gift spoken of more often - this tremendous gift of awareness?"  You never heard of it with the charismatics.  You heard of all the other wonderful gifts, but not this gift of awareness.  I remember reading about Theresa of Avila one time.  She was in the kitchen in the cloister and was fixing some eggs.  She almost went into ecstasy because this gift of awareness which came upon her.  She became so aware of God's presence that it took her right into that whole presence of God. 

When we experience a deep awareness of God's presence it means that He is constantly creating within us. He is saving us.  He is sanctifying us and it is very intimate.  It is a very intimate self-awareness that happens.  Just as our memory aids our total awareness of God, so does this awareness - the awareness that He literally holds us in existence - add to our total experience of Him.  All of this knowledge is within us - every memory of who we are and of who we are in God.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "The Healing of Memories," Omaha, 2004