February 23, 2004

"The Power of Heart Piercings"

One of the most powerful methods of intercession is when God allows the piercing of the heart.  All of us have experienced our hearts being pierced at different times.   It can be pierced with rejection from someone we love.  It can be pierced with loneliness.  It can be pierced simply because of misunderstanding.  Our heart is usually pierced because someone who is close to us has hurt us.  Those are the ones who God will use because it's love that pierces the heart.  Love pierced the heart of Mary so that the thoughts of other hearts could be revealed (see Luke 2:35).  So if your heart is being pierced, know that you are empowered and intercede as never before.  Ask God to use your pain power, that suffering power in union with the heart of Mary and the pierced heart of Jesus.  The results will be phenomenal. 

The first time I realized this was when I came home from the cloister.  A doctor and his wife had given me a hermitage to live in as well as a darling little kitten.  I became very close to this little kitten.  In the meantime, I was involved in a lot of prayer ministry, intercession, and teaching.  Once while I was praying on a prayer team, a person came to us because she had a headache.  She looked like she was dying.  I thought to myself, "I hope she doesn't come to our prayer team when Father's not here because she looks awfully sick."  But sure enough, she came for prayer ministry the one day that Father wasn't there.  I thought, "Well, a headache shouldn't be too hard to get healing for."  You see, I was still thinking that we have something to do with it.  So we just asked the Lord, "Please heal her headache."  All of a sudden, she jumped up, right out of the chair, and her face looked so surprised.  Her eyes were open, and she said, "It's gone!"  I said, "That's wonderful.  How long have you had this headache?"  She said, "Five years."  She had really been suffering.

She had another illness somewhere in her spine.  When she had had a spinal tap, something had happened in her spine, and the doctors were not able to heal it.  So she went off to some very well-known doctors in Massachusetts to have more tests.  While she was out there, my kitten got killed.  That brought tremendous heart pain for me.  I was very bonded with this little kitten.  The phone rang that afternoon.  It was my friend who had this spinal problem.  I said, "Did the doctors find out what was wrong?"  She said, "No, but God healed me about an hour ago.  I'm totally healed.  I'm pain free."  She said, "I think I could fly home without the airplane."  So I knew then that when we're in pain ourselves, God will use our pain, in union with His pain, to heal the pain of others.  Intercession works in this tremendous power. 

So whenever you have heart pain, no matter what it is or what caused it, God will honor that pain.  So use your pain.  Pain has power for an intercessor.          A priest once told us that he thought the greatest sorrow really wasn't pain, but it was wasted pain. 

Excerpt from "Power of Intercessory Prayer," Drexel, PA, and "Intercession," Picayune, MS, 2002.

February 16, 2004

"Baptized into the Trinity"

At Baptism, we received three beautiful gifts that are extremely important for intercessors.  We freely received the gifts of faith, hope, and love.  Faith is a beautiful gift to believe.  It's pure gift to believe that we are loved, to believe that we are going to heaven, and to believe that Jesus died for me.  The mind can't prove this, but the heart knows.   It's gift to know that we have been called and set aside to be God's own special people.

We also received the gift of hope at Baptism.  With this gift of hope, we connect into becoming a priestly people, into the vocation of Jesus, the High Priest Himself.  Jesus was a reconciler.  He was a healer.  He was a teacher.  He was many different things, but primarily, He was the Lamb of God who came to take away sin.  He went on the Cross to reconcile us to the Father.

St. Peter told the early Church, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people He claims for His own" (1 Pt 2:9).  If we are a priestly people, then we must have a priestly function.  Our priestly function is intercession.  Intercession is a beautiful ministry of sharing in the priestly ministry of Jesus.  We're reconcilers, and many times we need to go on the Cross to get those graces.  You might say it's the epitome of evangelization because it's connecting God and man together through grace.

We also received the gift of love at Baptism.  Scripture says, "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love" (1Cor 13:13).  Love will make us more like God.  A king could marry a very poor woman and because of the relationship, because of the love, she becomes a queen.  When we enter into a relationship with God, it's almost like we become so one with Him that He shares His mind with us.  He shares His heart.  He shares His life.  He shares His Mother.  He shares His friends.  He shares His angels.  He shares everything.  He gives us everything, and He expects us to return everything to Him as well.  This is what love is all about, and this beautiful gift at Baptism helps us to do that. 

The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is the great Gift of God's love. He totally transformed the people in the Upper Room on Pentecost.  They were never the same after receiving this great Gift of love. Those in the Upper Room received the tremendous grace of repentance.  Somehow the Spirit entered right into their hearts and began to show them truth and in that truth conviction.  They began to beat their breasts wanting to change, "What are we to do?" (Acts 2:37) 

Faith, hope, and love are essential for us if we are to be consciously aware of who we are.  We're baptized into the Trinity.  The Trinity dwells within us.  We have been raised up to a very high place, right into God's life.  And so intercession, by its very nature, is Trinitarian.  Intercession is to the Father, with Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Intercession is empowered by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit directs us, energizes us, and gives His power for what we're praying for to happen.

Excerpt from Powers and Principalities Conference, "Sword of Power: new covenant prayer," Omaha, NE, 2003.

February 9, 2004

"How Can Ordinary People Spend Time in Prayer?"

How can an everyday person have time to spend in of prayer?  Life is so full!  We have a lot of lay people in our community and throughout the world.  We have a couple of families who have ten children, and they pray everyday.  They never miss a day.  Our prayer doesn't have to be long-it can be only twenty minutes.  God will take twenty minutes.  If we can only pray thirty minutes, He'll take thirty.  After awhile, we'll get used to His presence within us so that no matter where we are or what we're doing, we'll learn to pray always.  We'll learn to tap into His presence within us.

I was reading a book that belonged to one of our lay families children.  There was a picture of a beautiful owl.  We think of the owl as wisdom-the wise old owl.  The book said that the owl's ears are not directly opposite each other-one ear is a little higher than the other is so that the owl can hear all the way around him.  He can hear at two levels at the same time.  That's how the gift of wisdom works.  We can hear what people say to us in the everyday work-a-day world, but we can also hear what God is saying to us in our hearts at the same time.  It's easy to check-in with Him.  It's easy to consult Him and bring Him into everything we do. 

One time He let me understand how limited we are.  We are so limited.  We're limited in love.  We're limited in patience.  We're limited in energy.  We are limited in every way.  I finally realized and said to Him, "You deliberately made us this way, didn't You?"  It was almost like He was smiling as He responded, "Well, you finally caught on."  I said, "This is so that we will always need You."  He said, "Yes.  I don't want to be left out of anything you do-anything."  We can walk out of church and leave Him and His presence in the Blessed Sacrament, but we can't walk out of His life when He's within us.  If we shower, He showers.  If we sleep, He's always there.  

One time when I was waking up but not fully conscious yet, I felt like I was eavesdropping as I listened to the Trinity talking amongst themselves.  They are within us.  The Spirit is the breath of God.  We couldn't breathe if God wasn't breathing and giving us this great gift.  So we can pray always wherever we are.  Many of our people pray when they're driving a car instead of turning the radio on or putting a tape in.  They're talking with God.  It's amazing the insights and prayers that can happen behind the wheel of a car. 

God can speak to us anytime, anywhere, in any situation-this is a tremendous gift.  So we need to spend some time with Him.  We'll get so used to the hermitage within, to His presence within, that it won't interrupt what we are doing at all. 

Don't leave Him out of anything you do.  This way, our whole life becomes a prayer.  It becomes our lifestyle.  Mary's prayer life was her lifestyle.  She never, ever, left Jesus out of anything.  In fact, this is like a pregnant woman who is always aware of the life that she is carrying, even when she's busy doing many things.  She's always very aware that she's carrying life.  In this kind of prayer, we're very aware that we are carrying the King of kings and the Lord of lords.  We are aware that we're carrying Life Himself.

Excerpt from "Questions and Answers," Great Falls, VA, 2002.

February 2, 2004

"Less of Me, More of Him"

Intercessors especially live in hope and dynamic faith.   Our faith is expectant because we've heard from God.  We know what He wants, we know what's going to happen, but we are only the connectors.  We connect faith and love.  We're the bridge.  We are bridging the gap.  So we have to be people of hope, living in hope that God is still God, that He loves us and is going to do what He has said.  God is so incredibly faithful. 

We are "proclaiming a covenant which has its beginning and end in the agape love of God" (Our Holy Rule, p. 1).  This covenant that we're proclaiming is union.  God is so interested in our relationship and union with Him that He has paid the highest price anyone could pay to have this union.  This is agape love, and He wants to continue it through us.  We become the distributors of His tremendous love.  Now we are willing to lay down our lives every day.  We are willing to lay down all of our opinions, all of our wants, and all of our wishes so that we can walk fully and beautifully in His perfect will.  This is union.  The closest we can get to God on this side of life is to have our will one with His will.  Being one with God's will is everything-it's our strength, our life, our love, and our protection, particularly for intercessors.  When we move out under His will, we have that beautiful canopy of His love and protection.  We are not going to get hurt or harmed.  But if we move out ahead of Him, then that's presumption and pride.  Lambs follow the leader.  Jesus gave us the beautiful imagery in His becoming the Lamb Himself.  We are led by the Spirit always.  The Spirit knows how to bring about sacrifice within us because He is a Spirit of love.  When we are being loved, and we know it, we'll do anything to return that love because love is strong.  There's nothing as strong as love.  Love is a beautiful gift that has been given to us, and it's poured forth from the pierced heart of Jesus. 

Often we don't realize everything is gift.  Grace is another word for life.  Every good gift comes from God.  Intercession is a beautiful gift, but it comes from the Gift of gifts-God's great gift of love.  Without His gift of love, we cannot lay down our lives.  But there is a price tag on souls.  All we have to do is meditate on Jesus Christ Crucified and we'll see how costly it is, and yet that grace was given to us freely.  "The gift you have received, give as a gift" (Mt 10:8), but it will cost us our lives. 

The German theologian Bonhoeffer said that when Christ bids a man to come and follow Him, He bids him to come and die.  We die every day so that we can take up the Cross and become more like Jesus-less of me, more of Him.  That's the way it works.  You know, He is a jealous God.  He won't compete with anyone.  He won't compete with us.  We have to make room within ourselves for the King.  He gives all of Himself, and He wants all of us in return.  So as we die daily, we actually are living more fully.  We start to live life to the fullest because we start to live His life.  This is God's great gift, and it comes forth from the pierced heart of Jesus, from that blood and water.  It comes forth from His humanity and His divinity.  This is who we are.  We are flesh in humanity, but we are filled with His divinity.  We hear this every year in the beautiful Christmas liturgy, "Oh wondrous exchange."  Just think, God gets our humanity and we get His divinity.  That's the exchange.  That's the covenant.  That's the marriage.  We get the better portion by far, but that's the way He set it up. 

"We contribute to the raising of the spiritual life of the Church in this greater ministry of the Holy Spirit" (Our Holy Rule, p. 1).  We become qualified ministers, as Paul said, of this new covenant (see 2Cor 3: 6).  As we come more and more into this deep marriage, this transforming union relationship, we gain the territory to obtain these same graces for others.  We become qualified ministers.  We're paying a price for it, but there's no joy quite like giving life and being life-bearers for others. 

This is what makes suffering bearable-God can use our  pain.  It's not wasted.  God can use suffering.  It can pierce other people's hearts.  This was the great prophetic word given to Our Lady, "You yourself shall be pierced with a sword - so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare" (Lk 2:35).  In the piercing of her heart, Mary was giving "birth" to her Son in other hearts.  Sometimes we just look at the hundred and twenty who came out of that Upper Room on Pentecost.  But look at the ones, the three thousand referred to in Acts 2:41, who weren't in the Upper Room but still received the grace of the piercing of the hearts themselves.  Their heart thoughts started pouring out, and they wanted to repent.  They wanted to know, "What are we to do?" (Acts 2:37)  That's powerful, heart-piercing intercession!  It contributed to raising the spirituality of the Church because Jesus started to take up residency within souls.  He started to grow within souls.  I think that He's still in the tomb in many souls today.  He hasn't resurrected.  So these heart piercings can get graces so that we can come alive and be filled with the Spirit of Jesus. 

Excerpt from "Formation on Rule," Omaha, NE, 2003.