December 18, 2006

"Blessed are You!"

In Wisdom 7:26 we read, "Wisdom is the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of His goodness."  That is something to ponder.   Wisdom, this tremendous gift, is the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of His goodness.  "My being magnifies the Lord," Mary sings in her Magnificat.   There is the spotless mirror!  There is the one who images God's whole identity, reflecting God in His entire goodness.  Our Lady is the spotless mirror of God's power, of His love.  She reflects His image.  When God looks into her heart, into her soul, He sees Himself.  She wants this for each of us.  It is her desire for us that when God looks into us He sees Himself. We are to reflect His image and His goodness!

In the creation scripture we hear the Trinity saying,  "Let Us make man in Our image and in Our likeness."    We are made in the image and likeness of God in the entire Trinity.  We are made in His goodness.  We must have the purity of heart which Our Lady, the Immaculate Heart, had.  "Blessed, blessed are the pure of heart."  What is the promise for the pure of heart?  "They shall see God."  If you want the gift of discernment, there it is.  We want to see God.  When we can see God in anything, when we recognize Him, we can let go of everything that is not Him.

To see God, we need purity of heart every day.  Adam and Eve were filled with light in the beginning.  They were filled with wisdom.  They could see God in each other.  When the sin came, they lost the light.  That is when they knew they were naked.  They had not been aware of it previously because they were so filled with God's light, with God's presence.

God is holy and pure. This is why the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier.  This is what the Holy Spirit does.  He has being doing it for a long time.  He carries out God's perfect will.  God has said, "I want you to be holy because I am holy.  I want you to be like Me."   We are His children - children of the holy Father, children of the just Father.

Our Lady, Lady Wisdom, goes on singing these wonderful praises in her Magnificat.  "He has looked upon His servant in her lowliness."  Our Lady thought of herself only as God's servant, God's handmaid.  So too, our thought life, and how we see ourselves in relationship to God, is very important.  We call it humility. It is truth, isn't it?  It is pure truth.   Yet, we are dealing with the terrible sin of pride within us.  Pride is rooted so deeply within us. We walked away from the garden with it.  We must constantly beg for this gift of truth, this gift of humility to really know that we are not gods.  Satan tried to tell Eve, "God wants you not to eat of this fruit, because if you do, then you will be like gods."  Satan thinks he is a little god, doesn't he?  So do the fallen angels.  We do not run around thinking that we are little gods.  We know that there is one God and that we are His creatures -  that we are the work of His hands.  We are His work of art.  When He created, He saw that everything was good.  But, when He created man, scripture says, "He saw that it was very good, very good!"  Years ago, Father Bertolucci used to say, "God doesn't make junk."  God saw that we were good and He sees the goodness within us because we are His work of art.

Humility is very important, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."   We have four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience and zeal for the salvation of souls, which is victim love.  For a long time I used to think that the vow and the spirit of obedience was number one.  We have grown to see that it is the spirit of poverty that is first.  Our Lady is Lady Poverty.  When I am empty and divested of me, myself and I, that little unholy trinity - when I am poor - I am automatically detached from my own will.  Obedience is never going to be a problem when we are detached, when we are poor in spirit as Mary was.  Then, we will always do whatever, whatever, whatever.  There is no attachment.

There is a kind of an octopus in all of us.  We let go of this, when we feel God wants us to let go of it and we quickly grab on to something else. We are letting go and grabbing on.  We must ask for the kind of attitude of mind and heart that Our Lady had.  We must ask to be handmaids, to be the servants, to be totally receptive, to be totally available to God for whatever.  That means being poor in spirit.  John of the Cross talks about this; he calls it  "the summit of perfection."  He says, "Nada, nada, nada," which means, "Nothing, nothing, nothing."  He understood that when Jesus said, "The kingdom of Heaven is yours," it is only in our extreme poverty that we can be rich.  The Bible is filled with beautiful insights on God's kingdom - the kingdom love.  When we have the kingdom, then the King is in residence there.

A priest once told me this story of a little girl in his parish.  She was quite good at conversing with Jesus.  On the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, they were talking about Our Lady and he asked, "Do you know what the mystical body means?"   Oh, she knew that, she told him.  Jesus had explained it to her.  He said, "Well, do you know what part of the mystical body Our Lady is?"  He was getting ready to explain it to her theologically when she said, "Well, I think I do but, I think I need to ask Jesus one more time."   He waited while this little girl went up and knelt before a statue or Our Lady.  He said that he could see her talking.  When she came back, she said, "Jesus said she is the foot.  She is the foot."   Father told me that he knew right away that she had heard from God because it is through her foot, her humility, that Our Lady crushes satan. That is who she is.  That is what she does.  It is humility that crushes pride.   This is where the warfare is.  We are going after the dragon.  We are going after pride. It is so important that we have this attitude of Our Lady because when we become poor in spirit, we can crush the head of the serpent with humility.

Our Lady goes on to say, "He has filled the empty with good things."  Good always mean God things.  Jesus said that no one is good except God.  Good things - these are things of God.  Our former Holy Father had such a beautiful motto. "Totus tuos!"  "I am all yours!"  He moved in the beautiful spirit of poverty himself.  He had a phenomenal relationship with Our Lady and he had incredible wisdom.  When we say that we are called to holiness we mean that we are called to hunger and thirst.  If you do not have this hunger, this thirst, ask for it.  Many times we pray for people who, for example, do not want to forgive.  We ask God to give them the desire.  If you do not want to be a saint, if you do not want to be holy, ask for the desire.  If you are not hungering and thirsting for God and His presence, ask for the desire.

"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness," Jesus said.  And here is the promise:  "They shall be satisfied."  They shall be filled.  A long time ago, when I was visiting a nun who was very ill I asked her, "How would you like me to pray?"  She said, "Please ask God to give me an appetite.  If I can just get an appetite, I think that I will get well."  That is how we prayed; we prayed for an appetite.  She did get well and she is still living today.  I think she is in her nineties.   We need an appetite for God so that we can become spiritually healthy, don't we?   We want to be spiritually healthy.  We want to be satisfied.

We must remember that it is daily bread that we need.  Jesus said, "Give us this day our daily bread."  You might be satisfied today, but tomorrow you need to go back to the desert for more. At home, we go to our table every day for food.  I think the kitchen cooks can verify that.  It is not enough for us to eat every other day.  Every day we show up.  Every day we have to be fed.  We are like little sheep. Sheep eat all the time but when they are satisfied, they are very contemplative.  Then instead of grazing, they are gazing!

"Blessed are the peacemakers."  Our Lady is total peace.  In Medjugorje, she comes under the title, "Queen of Peace," because of her fiat.  Her will is so one with God's, that she is always in perfect peace.  Here is the promise: "Blesses are the peacemakers," Jesus said. "They shall be called children of God."  Children!  It is the children who are the peacemakers.  Children forgive. Children forget.  Children do not hold grudges in their heart.  They do not hold resentments.  "A child," scripture says, "shall lead."  We need to be children; we must be peacemakers, we must have peace so that we can give peace.  At Bethlehem, the angels said, "Peace to those of good will."  That is God's will.  When we are in God's will we have perfect peace no matter what the trials, no matter what the turbulence, no matter what the stresses, the frustrations, no matter anything, no matter what the cross is, we never lose that peace.  We are moving in God's will, in union with God, the Prince of Peace.

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

December 11, 2006

"Setting the Captives Free"

Jesus was always led by the Spirit; He was empowered by the Spirit.  In Luke 4 we hear Jesus saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me. He has sent Me to bring good news to the poor."   There is poverty like you have never seen today - spiritual poverty.  We are sent.  The Holy Spirit has sent us forth with that word. The Word, the good news, is Jesus. God said, "My word will always return to Me.  It will accomplish what it was sent to do." He sends forth that Word, Jesus, to come into the hearts of the poor!  There is no poverty like that of a heart that does not have Jesus.

We are hearing from so many people who are experiencing the good news - the fruit of intercession.  People are experiencing tremendous healings.  People write to us who want to conceive a child.  We pray, "Holy Spirit, you are the Lord and Giver of Life.  They need life!"  And there are pregnancies right and left.  That is good news for parents.  Children are coming off drugs - all from intercession.  You do not even have to be there because God is going forth!  It is good news.

We are sent to set the captives free.  Jesus said, "I was sent to bring freedom to captives." There are so many ways of being captive.  I was directing a young man who was in terrible bondage from fear - all kinds of fear, layers and layers and layers of fear.  I noticed that his dreams always had his father in them.  No matter what the dream was saying in different areas, it always came back to his father.  I asked him if he had noticed it and he said that he had.   I said, "You tell me that you had this wonderful relationship with your father, and you tell me what a beautiful man he is.  You are singing his praises in all sorts of ways.  But your dreams are not saying that at all.  Your dreams are saying something quite different."  You cannot control what you dream.  We pay a lot of attention to dreams, particularly when people are on retreat because God speaks to us through them to let us know what is going on.   I knew that with this young man there was something locked very deep within, which the heart unconsciously remembered.  The heart remembers everything.  You are born with that heart.  The mind does not develop right away but the heart does.  So much is repressed. We asked the Lord "What is this deep root, that keeps such terrible imagery of his father in the heart of this young man?"   The answer came back clear.  As a little boy, when his dad would get angry, he would call his son a devil  over and over and over.  That is really serious.  We get most of our identification from our fathers, uncles and grandfathers - from the male.  When we are dealing for example with someone who is into homosexuality, we try to connect him or her to "The Father," so that they can get their true identity.  Healings take place once a person can connect to the Father, our Heavenly Father.

This young man had this terrible pain of being identified with a devil.  He started blocking that memory out because it could not really come out as a little child.  His heart was in all this pain, all this hurt.  He thought that this is what his father really thought of him. 

His healing came a little bit differently.  His healing came from the Blessed Mother.  If you find someone who has been hurt by their own father, often times the Heavenly Father is the first one they go to.  If you find that a person has been hurt by a man in some way, you must find out, "Can you relate to anyone in the Trinity?  Or to Our Lady?"  He could relate to Our Lady!  So we asked Our Lady,  "Mary, do you have anything to say?  Can you obtain the key for him?" Right away she said, "Yes!" She called him by name.  She said, "My Son was called a devil too!"  That very identification set him free!  Jesus had been called the same thing and he knew that somehow it was all right. He could let it go. He realized that it was not really about him.  It was about the enemy using other people. He realized, "That was not really my father!  The enemy was using my father to hurt me."  This understanding set him totally free.

We are called to give sight to the blind.  We have seen all kinds of conversions!  Only God can go into the human heart and get that light.  Many times we quote the scripture from Revelations, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock!"  That is a beautiful scripture and it has its place in this ministry.  But we find that when people are really in fear, terrible fear, it is not the right scripture for them.  That scripture describes the apostles in the upper room when the door was locked.  Those men were in that room in fear, weren't they?  Jesus did not stand there and knock and say, "Can I come in?"  They probably would not have let Him in because they did not even know He was alive.  Jesus walked through the door.  He can walk through hearts no matter what the fear is, no matter what the pain is, no matter what.  He can walk through in peace.  When He gives the word, it happens.  When He says, "I love you," it happens.  When He says, "Peace," it happens. He can give sight.  He can give that conversion.  "Ask Me," He tells us," I will walk through the door."

You may be asking yourself, "Can anyone intercede? Is it for anyone and everyone?"  Yes!  Yes it is.  We have many children in our community.  Children are wonderful, wonderful intercessors.  One time there were a lot of parents having to make a big decision concerning schooling and all the children gathered and met upstairs, interceding for the parents, asking that God would lead their parents in the right decision.  And He did.   When we cannot find something, we will ask the children, "Will you ask God where this is?"  They are so pure!  We find all sorts of things. 

We have a beautiful family, who, when they were told that the wife could never bear children, started to adopt.  They have several adopted children now.  One day the children came to them and said, "We want a baby!"  She is forty-two years old now.  "We want a baby," they kept saying. Their father told them that they were too old now to even adopt a baby.  "We can still adopt," he told them, "but the children have to be a little bit older now."

"No. We want a baby!"

"We cannot get a baby for you."

After they thought about this for a while, the children said, "Okay then!  We will just ask God."

"Well why don't you just do that?"

All the children in that family got together and asked God for a baby.  Their mother became pregnant!
Intercession - setting the captives free - is for everyone!

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Intercession," Waveland, MI, 2005

December 4, 2006

"Remain in Me"

Quite often Jesus reminds us, as intercessors, that He is the vine; we are not.  We are but branches.  The power operates through intercessors but intercessors cannot operate without the power.  The branch cannot do a thing without the vine.  The branch cannot bear fruit apart from the vine; it will die.  We must receive from the vine.  This union is so important.  Protect your desert time.  Guard it even if it is just 15 minutes a day.  Protect it as best as you can.  Jesus says in John 15, "Remain in Me.  Remain in Me."  Do not leave Me. Do not leave Me at all.  He says, "My love will never leave you. I am with you always.  Do not leave me.  Do not go out of yourself and live outside of yourself all day long.  Remain in Me."   In this way, the battle can go on if He wants it to go on.  Intercession can go on if He wants it.  We are totally available if He wants it.   The intercession may be as simple as driving along in the car when somebody cuts in front of you.  There is the person, which He is putting on your heart right at that moment.  There is the intercession.  You have experienced this.  I see heads nodding.  You know what I am talking about.  This is the availability about which we speak.    We are on call, aren't we?  We are on call.   We are being led by Him.

There are stages to remaining in Him and living in Him.  The deeper the union the more power of His risen life can operate through us.  Then, there comes new positions of spiritual authority.  We can always gain deeper and deeper positions of spiritual authority as we grow deeper and deeper in our relationship with Him.  We are always growing.  Jesus said,   "All power in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me "  (Matthew 28:18).  He also says,   "What I have, I give now to you."   He wants us to share in His power.

Not too long ago, I had an interesting experience of a realm of intercession that I had not seen before.  We were praying with a person who is a victim of satanic ritual abuse (SRA). About six of these individuals have been sent to Bellwether.  This is new territory for us.  God is teaching us and we are learning a lot.   I will share a new territory into which He took me when I was praying with this person.  We come against satan all the time, as you know.  And You do too.  But this was a different experience.  He had been putting in my heart the scripture, which says that He descended into hell and on the third day He rose.  That had been coming frequently in my prayer.  We find that the Lord helps to prepare us before taking us to another place so that we can get comfortable with it.  Then we can begin to receive His teachings from it.  I have been praying about this descent of His into hell and what really happened there and what it meant.  He was descending in His humanity.  This is a great mystery.  I do not pretend to understand it at all.  I do not pretend to understand God, in His entirety, either.  I think that is why I love Him so much.  He is mysterious.  There is always something to learn.  When I was praying and the Lord was leading me, He led me right into hell.  Actually, I am not sure if I was in hell or if I was in the hellish existence in which this person herself is living.  I went into these flames.  It was very much like the children of Fatima had described.  Many SRA victims will describe it to you this way as well.  Satan was there on a throne.  That was new for me.  I have never seen him on a throne and I have never seen him on a throne in hell.  I was there with Jesus.  It was just like I had been there all the time.  I had no fear.  I just went up to him and demanded - demanded - that he let her go.
"Let her go."  Interestingly, he did.  He did.  This is another territory of some kind of authority that God has given to us.   I think, as we stay faithful to the desert time, He wants to lead us all into deeper territories of His authority.  He said,  "All power in Heaven and earth has been given to Me.  What I have I now am giving to you." So ask Him.  Ask Him to take you into these different territories and see what He wants you to do in order to gain them.

He may ask some difficult things and He may not.  There is a spirit of poverty which must go with everything in the spiritual life, particularly in intercession and especially for intercessors.  One of the first things God said to me after I entered the cloister was that I was to give up praying for my family.  He said, "I want you to take care of My family now and I will take care of yours."  That was very difficult for me.  When I entered the cloister I thought, "This is going to be wonderful, I can pray for this person and this person and this person."  As you know I am a convert and my family is not Catholic.  It would have been a wonderful opportunity to really have the time to pray for them.  We must trust God.  We must trust Him.  It was difficult but I did it.   I am not saying that He will ask that of you but I do not pray for my family.  I just ask God to bless them; that is all.  And they have been incredibly blessed - the children, the grandchildren - they have all been so blessed.    When I get to heaven I hope to meet the intercessor, whomever she or he is, who is praying for my family.  They are doing a great job.  I will spend eternity thanking them as well.   We never know what He is going to ask.  Intercessors must be available to whatever.  He has His needs.  He has His concerns and He has many people in His heart.  If He does ask you not to spend so much time praying for this group of people, then do it.  Remember, He said in Scripture, "I have other sheep that you do not know of yet.  I have other sheep (John 10:16). I think we are going to see more and more of these other sheep.  They will be coming into our prayer, into our life more and more.  There is always a poverty of spirit that goes with the cross.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "The Power of Territorial Intercession,' Omaha, NE  2005

December 4, 2006

"Remain in Me"

Quite often Jesus reminds us, as intercessors, that He is the vine; we are not.  We are but branches.  The power operates through intercessors but intercessors cannot operate without the power.  The branch cannot do a thing without the vine.  The branch cannot bear fruit apart from the vine; it will die.  We must receive from the vine.  This union is so important.  Protect your desert time.  Guard it even if it is just 15 minutes a day.  Protect it as best as you can.  Jesus says in John 15, "Remain in Me.  Remain in Me."  Do not leave Me. Do not leave Me at all.  He says, "My love will never leave you. I am with you always.  Do not leave me.  Do not go out of yourself and live outside of yourself all day long.  Remain in Me."   In this way, the battle can go on if He wants it to go on.  Intercession can go on if He wants it.  We are totally available if He wants it.   The intercession may be as simple as driving along in the car when somebody cuts in front of you.  There is the person, which He is putting on your heart right at that moment.  There is the intercession.  You have experienced this.  I see heads nodding.  You know what I am talking about.  This is the availability about which we speak.    We are on call, aren't we?  We are on call.   We are being led by Him.

There are stages to remaining in Him and living in Him.  The deeper the union the more power of His risen life can operate through us.  Then, there comes new positions of spiritual authority.  We can always gain deeper and deeper positions of spiritual authority as we grow deeper and deeper in our relationship with Him.  We are always growing.  Jesus said,   "All power in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me "  (Matthew 28:18).  He also says,   "What I have, I give now to you."   He wants us to share in His power.

Not too long ago, I had an interesting experience of a realm of intercession that I had not seen before.  We were praying with a person who is a victim of satanic ritual abuse (SRA). About six of these individuals have been sent to Bellwether.  This is new territory for us.  God is teaching us and we are learning a lot.   I will share a new territory into which He took me when I was praying with this person.  We come against satan all the time, as you know.  And You do too.  But this was a different experience.  He had been putting in my heart the scripture, which says that He descended into hell and on the third day He rose.  That had been coming frequently in my prayer.  We find that the Lord helps to prepare us before taking us to another place so that we can get comfortable with it.  Then we can begin to receive His teachings from it.  I have been praying about this descent of His into hell and what really happened there and what it meant.  He was descending in His humanity.  This is a great mystery.  I do not pretend to understand it at all.  I do not pretend to understand God, in His entirety, either.  I think that is why I love Him so much.  He is mysterious.  There is always something to learn.  When I was praying and the Lord was leading me, He led me right into hell.  Actually, I am not sure if I was in hell or if I was in the hellish existence in which this person herself is living.  I went into these flames.  It was very much like the children of Fatima had described.  Many SRA victims will describe it to you this way as well.  Satan was there on a throne.  That was new for me.  I have never seen him on a throne and I have never seen him on a throne in hell.  I was there with Jesus.  It was just like I had been there all the time.  I had no fear.  I just went up to him and demanded - demanded - that he let her go.
"Let her go."  Interestingly, he did.  He did.  This is another territory of some kind of authority that God has given to us.   I think, as we stay faithful to the desert time, He wants to lead us all into deeper territories of His authority.  He said,  "All power in Heaven and earth has been given to Me.  What I have I now am giving to you." So ask Him.  Ask Him to take you into these different territories and see what He wants you to do in order to gain them.

He may ask some difficult things and He may not.  There is a spirit of poverty which must go with everything in the spiritual life, particularly in intercession and especially for intercessors.  One of the first things God said to me after I entered the cloister was that I was to give up praying for my family.  He said, "I want you to take care of My family now and I will take care of yours."  That was very difficult for me.  When I entered the cloister I thought, "This is going to be wonderful, I can pray for this person and this person and this person."  As you know I am a convert and my family is not Catholic.  It would have been a wonderful opportunity to really have the time to pray for them.  We must trust God.  We must trust Him.  It was difficult but I did it.   I am not saying that He will ask that of you but I do not pray for my family.  I just ask God to bless them; that is all.  And they have been incredibly blessed - the children, the grandchildren - they have all been so blessed.    When I get to heaven I hope to meet the intercessor, whomever she or he is, who is praying for my family.  They are doing a great job.  I will spend eternity thanking them as well.   We never know what He is going to ask.  Intercessors must be available to whatever.  He has His needs.  He has His concerns and He has many people in His heart.  If He does ask you not to spend so much time praying for this group of people, then do it.  Remember, He said in Scripture, "I have other sheep that you do not know of yet.  I have other sheep (John 10:16). I think we are going to see more and more of these other sheep.  They will be coming into our prayer, into our life more and more.  There is always a poverty of spirit that goes with the cross.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "The Power of Territorial Intercession,' Omaha, NE  2005