OUR CHARISM

 March 17, 2008 "Becoming a Child"
I was praying about this one time several years ago and thought  how interesting it is that the mind itself can  remember only so far back -  but the heart, the deep mind, is like a computer.  It does not forget anything.  It is all there. God has to reach in and touch that memory and bring it forth. 

I will share my own experience of healing in the womb.  God probably could have done it any time in my life but He chose to bring it up just as He was calling me out of the cloister.  I have often wondered why He waited so long.  What was there about the timing?   It is exactly what I was just sharing.  It is because some of those hurts way back then, will affect the way we are going to act out a certain pattern in our lives.  He was now calling me out of the cloister.  He was going to be calling me into leadership, into public speaking, into a lot of things I had no idea He was going to be calling me into.  And so in order for me to be able to be His instrument, He had to heal me of this terrible inferiority complex that I had.  Why I had it I did not know.  But I knew that I absolutely would hyperventilate if I even had to get up and open my mouth in front of anybody - even in the cloister.  We had to get up and read part of the Divine Office.  Oh I thought I was going to die a thousand deaths.  You know how it is.  You are gasping for air, your heart is pounding.  He had to heal me of that and He did it a beautiful way.  He did it right before the cloister released me.  It was done simply through prayer.  He let me understand something that happened in the womb.  Only God can do this.  He can take you right there and tap into that deep memory and you remember everything because you are having the experience again or He is simply releasing an experience that is still very present and very vivid and He brings it to light. 

These are the types of things that God may show you.  He knows that those little experiences that we have back there, can affect our entire lives.  They can set the pattern for how we act and react.  If a person, for example, has always felt unlovable, has always been restless or fearful, the need for inner healing probably goes all the way back to the very earliest years of life.  Someone may ask you, "Well when did this begin?"  And you may think, "I do not know.  I have always been like this."  If you ever have had that for an answer, it probably goes back to something that is in the unconscious, the subconscious. 

The purpose of these teachings and these group-sharings over the next few weeks is to try to set forth a very simple method, a simple way, for us to discover together, the healing power of Jesus.  Together we want to begin to experience the process of changing negative attitudes and feelings into positive responses.  We want to begin to learn how, first of all, to recognize and understand our weaknesses and how to allow them to become really creative forces in our lives.  Paul understood this.  "When I am weak, then I'm strong."  That is a grace.  That is something which we have to begin experiencing -how, out of weakness, we become strong and we can praise God for it.  And how this can become a creative force in our lives.  The very weakness itself can become a creative force in our life.

This process that we want to go through in the next few weeks will hopefully enable us to gain a healthier self knowledge, self image, and realize a greater sense of our true worth, who we really, really are.  We hope that this will also help us to develop deeper sensitivity to one another and to the others with whom God will call us to pray and share.
Emotional illness is an illness of the heart. It can block our wholeness and our holiness.  You really cannot separate them; they go together.  We want to begin to realize that each of us has a need to experience love more deeply, to surrender more completely and to have that deeper hunger and desire to be more filled with the glory of God, which is the very life of God Himself, the fullness of His love. 

Jesus makes available to each of us the gift of freedom.  This is what inner healing is all about - freedom from negative emotions and attitudes, freedom that would prevent us from being the child, from loving spontaneously and joyously, from really being the person we are created to be.  Inner healing is a process of reconstructing our emotions so that we can use them correctly.  This is done under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  We are made to love.  The Spirit wants to set our hearts free to love, to love, to love - to love and never count the cost.  That is frightening for an adult, but not for a child.  That is what inner healing is all about -  becoming a child. 
Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Introduction to Inner Healing," Omaha, 2004

DISCERNMENT

Inner healing is a process of preparing the way of the Lord, to make more room for Jesus in my heart.  It is a journey which we travel throughout our entire Christian lives because there will always be hurts - always - and as we live this life out, we gradually become infused more and more with the healing light. 

The healing light is the Holy Spirit, that "Discerner," the Spirit who gives us the revelations of God's love, the Spirit who is constantly crying out within us, "Abba! Daddy!" connecting us with God's love.  We cannot get very far without the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Maybe this is one of the reasons why, when we were baptized in the Spirit, it was not very long, before we began to see all the areas of woundedness in our lives.  The Spirit wants to make us whole; He wants to make us one.  So no one sets out on a journey without first making some preparations for the trip.  Since we have no road maps to consult, we must entrust ourselves  totally to the Holy Spirit, to the Director, Himself, to lead us into all truth for He will guide us into the truth, especially about ourselves. 

We really know very little about ourselves until the Spirit begins to reveal.  In fact, many people have no idea how beautiful they are, how good they are; some have such a false self image.  You have probably been there yourselves.  Maybe you are struggling still with certain aspects of your own image.  The Spirit will lead us into the truth of who we are in the presence of God and in this Truth, the fruit will always be freedom.  That is the beauty of inner healing; it will always bring freedom. Everything that God does for us has to do with freedom.  The fruit of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius is freedom.  We always come out of a retreat more free than when we went in.  It is the fruit of God because it is truth. 

This personal quest for inner healing often begins when we feel utterly defeated by some uncontrollable situation, or some uncontrollable attitudes which I have and cannot control  - attitudes which are controlling me.  That is when we have to really confront the negativity within ourselves and ask God to show us what the root is.  What is causing the attitude that is leading me to think this way, or to react this way?  When God begins to show the root, then we will have the cure, we will have the healing.  Oftentimes this begins when the Lord shows us the hurt little child within.  The hurt little child within can cause us to form many negative responses.  It is this little child within that has suffered rejection, maybe isolation.  Usually you will find that there has been a lack of love which  made it difficult for the child to have a healthy relationship with the Father.  It becomes too frightening to be a child; it is too hurtful, it makes us too vulnerable.  "I have been there. I do not want to grow up and be that vulnerable."  So the fig leaves start wrapping around and we start hugging ourselves, we start protecting ourselves out of this tremendous fear.  And this little child is the primary cause of adult immaturity.  Interesting, isn't it?  The adult in us cannot really come into full maturity until the child is healed within us.  When that little child within us gets healed, we become mature at the same time.  It is an interesting paradox.  They are one and the same.  Maturity is simply becoming healed as the child.  The child is what has now matured.  That is the way that God made us.  It is this little child that is the chief detriment really to Christian love and the fulfillment of one's commitment to Jesus.  It is this little child that needs to experience the love and acceptance of Jesus.  This experience  (and we have all had it) of different inner healings with the child within us, coincides very much with the findings of psychologists.  They have books and books written that tell us that the deepest, deepest hurts go way back to the time when we were the most vulnerable and the least able to defend ourselves.  A baby cannot defend itself; a little child cannot defend itself. 

And so we know now, of course, through some of the top healers and psychiatrists and psychologists, that the hurts even go back to the time when we were still in the womb, before we were even born.  We know that John the Baptist leapt for joy in the womb.  He was profoundly touched by the Mother of God and not only the Mother of God, but by Jesus Himself who was within her womb.  There is tremendous life going on there in the womb.   We know that the child is very sensitive to the moods of its mother.  If the mother does not really want the child or is suffering from anxiety or fear, that little baby can somehow pick up the feelings of the mother and respond to them.  Sometimes in inner healing ministry God will let a person remember that womb time, remember that maybe they were saying, "I am not going to come out!  I am not going to be born.  I do not want this life."  That can be a subconscious thing that we carry for years and years.  These earliest memories, the experts tell us, can affect us especially our memories up to at least the age of three years old, because the ages of one, two and three, they say, really govern the most important time in our lives.  It is a time when we set the pattern for how we are going to live out our attitudes and our thinking process.  It is amazing when you think of all that is locked in a subconscious mind that remembers. 
Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Introduction to Inner Healing," Omaha, 2004

OUR CHARISM

 March 3, 2008 "It Is All About Love"

 This will be entitled "The Experience of Inner Healing" and we will try to give just a simple introduction.  Actually, inner healing isn't that simple because we are not simple.  We are very complicated.  We have layers and layers.  God just takes us in stages.  Inner healing is a process like everything about life and in the spiritual life.  It is a process. 

The bottom line of the experience of inner healing is that it is an experience of love.  It is only love that heals.  And if it is an experience of love, it must be  an experience of God, because God is love.  In Ephesians 3:16-17 Paul says, "Out of his infinite glory, may He give you the power through His Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ might live in our hearts."  That is a beautiful Scripture.   Paul understood that for inner healing, the inner man has to be renewed, and he talks about the hidden self.   This is very much that Nazareth self, the interior life, when we talk about spirituality.  And he said it has to grow strong so that Jesus can really live within our hearts. You may recall that beautiful song we sing "May Christ find a dwelling place of faith in our hearts."  That is the hard part - to really believe that He is there.  He takes us where we are and He will start increasing our faith.  As the Scriptures say, "Lord, I do believe but help my unbelief."

 St. Paul recognized the shadow side  of our nature, the dark side, the unconscious part of our minds and that needs to be set free if we are really truly to be one with Jesus. 

Inner healing is simply asking Jesus to walk back to the time when we were hurt and to free us from the effects of that wound in our present life, in our present time, in the now.  It is very interesting. We want Him to free us from the effects of that wound in the here and now.  This is important.  Many times (maybe 95% of the time) we do not  know what the original wound was, or from where it came,  but we can begin to see the effects that it is having in our lives now, the way we respond to something, the way our attitude is, the way I think, the way I feel.  All of a sudden I can maybe start having ,as we say, a theophostic moment.   "God, You are here now and You are showing me the way I am reacting now.  There is a root to this somewhere."  And so I think this is why some of the people that are much more into inner healing, the experts, tells us that Jesus really wants to set us free from the effects of the wound. 

This involves bringing to light the things that have hurt us.  It sounds simple doesn't it? Just bring it into the light.   Jesus is the light.  There are a couple of ways to do this. 
We can ask Jesus to flash that divine flash light and show us through His light.  We can even talk it out with another person, a person that we would trust.  That in itself can be a healing process, because at least we are getting it out into the light.  Sometimes when we get it out, we start to see it a little bit differently than when we remain in it, allowing it to go around and around within us in the dark.

This is why we ask people to journal. Journaling gets your feelings into the light.  It involves bringing things into the light and then praying to the Lord to heal the effects of the hurtful incidents of the past.   Hurtful events of the past cannot be ignored if we are to become fulfilled with the love of the Father. That is important.  We want to be full of God's love so we must look at the hurtful memories of the past, because they are taking up space.  They are taking up room; they might be taking up a place where we might even be afraid of God.  So inner healing is really not an option if we want to be free, if we want to be full of God's love. 

I am beginning this particular talk tonight on God's love, because that is the very heart of this charism.  This charism has so many different expressions, doesn't it?   It has intercession, it has deliverance, it has contemplation, it is Marian, it is devoted and consecrated to the Sacred Heart, it is charismatic.  It has everything that Jesus had in His life.  Sometimes when we try to tell people what our charism is,  we can we get away from the basic simplicity that it is love.  It is all about love. 
Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Introduction to Inner Healing," Omaha, 2004

INTERCESSION

February 25, 2008

“Methods of Prayer and Healing”

We take authority over weather.  We always pray God's peace so that the   weather will not harm anybody.  We have many tornadoes coming over Omaha.  The whole community does this and they go right back up.  It was interesting one time when a tornado was coming over actually Bellwether.  The media was all out there with their cameras and you could see the finger coming right down and the community took authority and right in front of the cameras, it just went right back up.  We never had a tornado touch down since 1975 in Omaha, Nebraska, for which we are very grateful to God.  We always pray God's peace. 
 
If it storms in your area, some storms can be from God, they can be wake up calls.  There can be different other reasons, but many of them may not be from God, so we use that authority as God has taught us. 

We use also the Mass.  It's so powerful, particularly for people that are hurting, people that are infested with evil spirits in any way.  We bring them to Mass when we go.  We bring them there in spirit and we put them in that chalice that they can be delivered by the blood of the Lamb, that they can be healed, that they can have new life.  We do not hear a lot of sermons about the blood of the Lamb.  Oh my goodness, it is so powerful.  It is the same blood that was shared on Calvary. 

We use the sacraments and sacramentals of the Church tremendously.  Blessed salt is wonderful.  In one way it is more powerful than the water because the Church has deliverance prayers on blessed salt.  It is just amazing what happens. 

 There was a man on an airplane one time looking at a pornography magazine.  He was up a little bit and you could see what he was looking at and then he got up to go to the restroom and so we just had a little salt there and just threw it into his seat.  When he came back, he never picked the magazine up again. 

 There was a woman whose husband used to come home from work and he would change clothes and then go out to the bar.  She used blessed salt and she put some in his shoes and he was back within the hour and she said, "Honey, you are back so soon!" He said, "Yeah, my feet hurt. ‘ 

Of course the sacrament of reconciliation, it is so healing.  It is the sacrament of the Father.  It is so healing and it sets us so free.  We were in a Church not too long ago and people were going to confession.  We were watching them all lined up.   I never noticed the difference in their faces when they went in and when they came out.  When they came out there was just an aura about them.  They were just beaming.  There was a peace.  There was a joy.  I realized that this is tremendous power, the healing power of God, because He is visiting his people.  This is what intercession and spiritual warfare ministry is all about.  God is visiting his people in his beautiful mercy. 

We use the angels. We use the angels all the time.  They do not automatically go about doing these things.  We saw St. Michael one time atop of our roof with a bunch of other angels.  They were in armor.  We had been interceding for something going on in Rome at the time.  We stopped the prayer and we said, "What are you doing?”  In other words, why aren't you here helping us?    Michael said, "We are here to be sent.  We have had our battle with Satan and we won.  This is the battle of the Lamb now.  We are here to help.  Send us, use us.”  Isn’t that amazing? They will not interfere unless they are asked.

We ask the angels to do things all the time.  Ask your guardian angel to do things. 

Sometimes we have a hard time getting our dog in.   Sometimes he will obey, sometimes he does not.  So, we just send our angel out every time we let the dog out and say, "Come and please bring the dog in.”  Within about two minutes, the dog arrives home.  Angels find parking places, they are just wonderful.  They do all sorts of things for us. 

Use your authority.  Jesus said, "All authority in heaven in earth has been given to Me.”  If Jesus Christ is within us, why wouldn't He share his authority with us?  It is His authority.  We are chosen in him.  We are called to set the captives free.  All this is the work of the kindness of our God who continues to visit his people in mercy, mercy, mercy. 

Excerpt from Mother Nadine’s, “Spiritual Warfare,” Corpus Christi, TX 2006