Intecessors of the Lamb

There are some other things that we do in the silence. We don't want to just sit there and listen to silence because in the beginning stages, our minds are going to wander. We have a difficult time remaining at "home." God is at home within us, but we are not always home. And so the Lord has taught us active listening, which means that we are engaging in a dialogue with Him, not just a monologue.

Sometimes our prayer is all the things I want to say. It might be the litanies, devotions, and novenas that I feel I need to do or everything I want to say about my day or a problem that I'm having. I'm doing all the talking; He doesn't get a word in. Then when day after day after day goes by like that we wonder why we're tired, why we're fatigued, why we haven't heard from God. We wonder what's wrong with our prayer. The problem is we're there, but we're not receiving.

In active listening He's taught us to read a sentence of Scripture or recall something we heard in the homily or at Mass, and ask a question about it. We ask just one question at a time and expect an answer. "Lord, what do You mean by this? Lord, when You were writing in that dirt when that woman was caught in adultery and all those people started finding out, what were You writing?" See if He'll tell you. "Lord, why were there two angels in that tomb? Who were they? What do You want me to know about that?" "Lord, how did You know that power went out from You when that woman just touched You and there was a crowd of people and everyone was touching You?" We can ask question after question after question.

Or we can take a psalm like Psalm 23 and ask a question. "The Lord is my Shepherd. Well, is He my Shepherd? Lord, I don't always let You shepherd me because that means You lead and I have to be the lamb. I'm not that good of a follower right now. Maybe we'd better talk about that today. I'd better learn how to be a little lamb." Or we can go on to the next sentence. "There's nothing I shall want. Oh Lord, I don't think I can even pray that. I have all kinds of wants and desires. I was going to ask You to do this and this and this for me today." "Nothing I shall want." So just take Scripture and begin to ask questions and expect Him to answer. He will answer, not in an audible voice, but all of a sudden, you will have an insight. All of a sudden, you will know something that a minute before you didn't know. He touches our mind. He touches our heart. He can infuse all of this knowledge and understanding. That's how the gifts of the Holy Spirit work. So allow that to happen.

Another dimension that we stress very much is journaling. We really encourage journaling. One time someone said that if life was worth living, it was worth logging. It is so important to write down all these little insights and dialogues with the Lord, the things that we see, and the insights we hear because at the end of a week, we review our journals. We are amazed at how God has been teaching and leading us. Usually we will see the theme He is developing. If we don't record it, we will miss it on a day-to-day basis because often it's one little piece here and another piece there. If we get simple things in prayer, we can almost be sure that we are hearing from the Lord. God is very simple. This whole spirit of prayer, this spirit of silence, and this spirit of listening are so important so we can receive.

Jesus said to His apostles, "Come apart and rest awhile" (Mk 6:31). He says that to all of us who are following Him-"Come apart and rest awhile. Come apart and just let it all hang out." This is where we can be our true selves. If we're angry, this is where we can let it all out to the Lord, talk it over with Him, and get His powerful grace to let it go and forgive. If we've been hurt, if our feelings have been hurt, if we're feeling rejected, whatever our emotions are, we can totally come apart. This is where there's no facade. There's no pretense. The real me is there with the real Jesus. We can talk everything out and work it out. It's important to do that because if we don't, we're going to project these emotions on to other people, and even more importantly, we're going to block God's love from coming into us. We would be the losers. We have to have open hearts.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Waiting on the Lord: How to Do It," San Bernadino, CA.

04-07-03 My Sin

April 7, 2003

"My Sin"

This week St. Ignatius wants us to look at our personal sin. One amazing thing about sin is that we can spot it so easily in everybody else, but with ourselves it's not that easy. Sometimes we see what we do and wonder, "Why do I keep doing that?" It is hard to get to the root or motive that is within. So to help us look at our personal sin, Ignatius has a Triple Colloquy to help us.

First, I want to look for a deep knowledge of my sin and the gravity of my sin so that I can develop a deep hatred for that sin. Secondly, I am looking for an understanding of the disorder of my actions. Ignatius says if we don't understand the disorder of our actions, we're not going to take the action necessary to change the disorder. The third dimension of the grace that Ignatius wants us to look for is a knowledge of the world so that we may put away what is worldly and vain.

The first point of looking at sin is that there's a difference between knowing my sin and realizing it. When I realize it, I see and understand it better. I may know it, but it is still on the surface, and at that level, I'm not going to be doing much about it really. I acknowledge it, I might even confess it, but that's as far as it goes. Ignatius wants us to realize our sin and have "a deep knowledge" of it.

One of the ways that we can have a deep knowledge of our sin is to consider who God is. Ignatius is going back to the foundation that we laid of who God is and who we are not. If I look at God's wisdom, I'm going to see my sin, my ignorance, because I'm opposing His wisdom. If I look at God's power, my sin is going to be in my weakness here. When I look at God's goodness, I can see my own wickedness. So look at any of God's attributes and whatever is the opposite of that attribute will be pretty much where my sin is going to be.

The second point of looking at sin is to understand the disorder of my actions. Now Ignatius says to help us in this area we should ask Our Lady to obtain for us from her Son the grace to really understand the disorder of our actions. St. Paul struggled with this, didn't he? "I don't understand why I do the things I do" (see Rom 7:15). We really don't understand unless it comes as revelation in prayer. Our Lady is excellent in helping us obtain this particular light.

Ignatius wants us to look at the disorder closely because there are two consequences of this disorder in our life. One is a loss of personal grace for us. It's going to impede and delay our becoming a saint which is God's perfect will for us. Satan loves that; delay is one of his hallmarks. Also, with disorder in our lives, there comes a debt of suffering. It's a penalty. We suffer from the disorder, don't we? If it's not corrected here, we suffer in Purgatory for it as well. So it's good to look at it here and now.

Ignatius put a great deal of emphasis on sin. He said sometimes penance helps to correct a disorder to where we can get back in control again. But we need to be careful about penance that it's not just exterior. Exterior penance can lead to tremendous pride if we're not careful. He said what we want to conquer is the interior man. He said we want to break the rebellion of the soul more than breaking the bones. We don't want to break our body, we don't want to get sick, we don't want to do something so severe that it will hurt us physically and cause tremendous pride. We want to break the interior rebellion within us.

And the third point in looking at sin is to obtain a knowledge of the world and to put away all that is worldly. That used to sound so simple. We live in the world, and sometimes we have one foot in both kingdoms-in God's world and in Satan's as well. So Ignatius wants us to really have a knowledge of the world in order to put away all that is worldly and vain. He says we should pray for this knowledge of the world in order to recognize the spirit of the world.

Ignatius says very simply that the shortest and almost only way to achieve sanctity is to have a horror for all which the world loves and embraces. Sometimes we wonder, "Is this of the world? Which kingdom is this of?" If the world is really embracing it, if it's really loving it, we can be sure it's in opposition to God. That's what Ignatius is saying. The world loves money, the world loves power, the world loves reputation, prestige, honor, and all those things that Satan put before Jesus in the desert. We fall into that in many, many ways.

So this week, we're going to be able to see more clearly: how is the spirit of the world in my life? How has it invaded my lifestyle or myself personally through the way I make decisions, the way I think, and in my deeper desires? It's going to be a time of deep revelation and knowledge. What we want to do is really recognize the sin in our lives, the root of it, and be able to root it out. We want to recognize the disorder, why it keeps repeating itself, and what God wants me to do about it. So we need to have light from the Holy Spirit. We need revelation because when it comes from God, it comes in so much love that we can see the Truth. We can see it, knowing we are deeply loved and knowing that God is going to do something about it.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Heart-to-heart Listening: My Sin," 2000.

02-10-03 Obedience

February 10, 2003

"Obedience"

Obedience is the very heart of the charism of Jesus' spirituality and of His mission. He said, "Behold, I come to do Your will" (Heb 10:7, 9). Jesus made it very clear that He came to do the Father's will. He came to repair sin and disobedience. He came to say, "Yes, Father, Abba" because Satan had said, "No, I will not serve." So Jesus comes as the Servant of servants. His particular service role to the Church, to humanity, to all of us, is intercession. It's an intercession that we call the Office of Intercession, the burden-bearing dimension of intercession, because it entails the Cross. This is where the power is. Jesus came to do the Father's will, and Scripture tells us that He learned obedience by the things He suffered (see Heb 5:8). He didn't have to walk that walk, but thank God He choose to because it enables us to walk it in His footsteps.

Obedience is difficult. Obedience is a suffering love. Obedience is the path to Calvary if we really want to say, "Yes, Lord" every day. All the saints knew this, and they all walked that walk. The Little Flower, who walked such a deep love walk, such a path of faith, said that the way of faith, the way of this deep love, is the way of the Cross.

St. John the contemplative had a tremendous relationship with Jesus. John calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (Jn 20:2). Isn't that beautiful? If we can really think of ourselves as disciples whom Jesus loves, we'll walk the walk, too, because wherever He goes, that's where we will want to be.

The Father is looking for passionate hearts today as never before. After the Resurrection, the apostles were fishing, and Jesus called them in. He had a conversation with Peter. Jesus said, "Peter, do you love Me?" Peter said, "Yes, Lord, You know that I love You." The word for love that they are using is "filio"-I love you as a brother. Jesus said, "Then feed my lambs." Jesus asked again, "Peter, do you love Me?" "Yes, Lord, I filio you." "Then feed My sheep." But when Jesus asked Peter the third time, He changed the verb for love. He said, "Peter, do you agape Me?-meaning do you love Me enough to lay down your life for Me? Do you love Me more than the others?" After walking with Jesus for three years, Peter, still in a lot of pride, in a lot of purification, but also in a lot of love, finally in truth could say, "I can only filio You" (see Jn 21:15-17). But at Pentecost, Peter received the grace of agape love so now in turn he could lay down his life.

The Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said that when Christ bids a man to come and follow Him, He bids him to come and die. This is the invitation to all of us if we want to follow in Jesus' footsteps, in tremendous generosity and agape love. This is why we need the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no way that we are going to lay down our lives and run to the Cross without this kind of love power because it's supernatural. Christianity is not natural; it's supernatural. And so the Holy Spirit has been giving us this very special gift of God's love to lead us to the Cross, to take us there, and to sustain us there as well. Jesus said, "Behold, I come to do Your will" (Heb 10:7, 9).

When we think of Cana, we think of the great miracle. There's a wedding feast going on, and there's a lot of joy. And that's wonderful. But it was very costly for Mary, and she knew it. John tells us that the Mother of Jesus was there, and when she sees that the wine has run out, she tells Jesus, "They haven't any wine." He doesn't call her "mother" but He calls her "woman." "Woman, what is that to you and to Me?" (see Jn 2:4) He knew right then from her request that His mission of deep intercession, His mission as victim lamb, His mission of giving everything to the Father had begun. Mary is the woman from Genesis. She is the woman that the Father spoke about to Satan when He said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, and your head will be crushed" (Gn 3:15). Mary is in mission, and she's prepared for it now as well.

Jesus seemed surprised at Cana, "Woman, what is that to Me?" He's thinking of treading the winepress on Calvary; He's thinking of producing the wine for Pentecost. He says to her, "What is that to you and to Me?" Mary comes back and says, "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5). Jesus understands that she has been prompted by her Spouse, the Holy Spirit, to bring His miraculous powers into the light. Those thirty beautiful years of Nazareth, so hidden, so intimate, were over. She was cutting the apron strings, and that was painful for Our Lady. She knew it was time because the Spirit had prompted her. Jesus knew his Mother had been prompted by the Spirit to initiate the beginning of His ministry now. And the very first thing she says to the servants is, "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5). Mary is repairing Eve's disobedience when Eve made a choice not to do what God had said. Mary now is the woman, and she says, "Do whatever He tells you." Disobedience is over.

We need to repair the sin and win back the Kingdom for the Father. So from the very beginning, obedience entails sacrifice. It entails the Cross. Obedience of heart is an obedient love, it's a sacrificial love, and it will cost us.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Obedience of Heart," Fort Smith, AR, March 1999.

02-17-03 A Call to Freedom

February 17, 2003

"A Call to Freedom"

The Spiritual Exercises are a call to freedom. Freedom is the purpose. If anyone ever says to you, "Why should I make the Spiritual Exercises?", it's just that simple - to become free. There is something in us that God put there - we want to be free. Christian freedom comes from a clear knowledge of God and a clear knowledge of ourselves; it comes with self-control; it comes with a dedication to God and His will. And so we come into a discipline. Freedom is purchased at a great price. It's God's gift to us, but it takes discipline. As we go through the Exercises, we come more and more into this spiritual freedom that St. Ignatius is talking about.

Ignatius says that we should have no disordered love or attachments. What he means by disordered love or attachments is anything that is not ordered directly to God and anything that we do or have that doesn't bring us into praise, reverence, freedom, and motivation of God. Otherwise, we can use people for our own purposes. We can use things. We can have all sorts of attachments that Ignatius says are disordered; there is nothing holy about them. They're not going to lead us to God. He isn't talking about good, holy attachments. He's talking about disordered attachments which has to do with my self-love, my will, and what I desire to control.

Then what do we mean by freedom itself? When most people think of freedom, they think of freedom from: freedom from parental authority (can't wait until we get out of the house, can't wait until we get the car keys), freedom from school (a lot of children just can't wait to get free from school), freedom from an employer. Freedom has many different connotations for each of us, but it usually is freedom from something or someone. Ignatius doesn't mean this at all. He wants us to come into a freedom that is freedom for, not freedom from. Freedom for loving God before all and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

There's another type of freedom: the freedom to accept our limitations. This sounds easy, but it is difficult to accept our limitations. Why can't we be free from limitations? God is. The only way we can be free from limitations is to get into a deeper union with God. He made us limited so we would come to Him in all the areas where we are limited. If we fight and struggle against our limitations, we're going to be in bondage because we are resisting the way God has created us. We're not accepting His decision in the way He created us. He created us to be very, very limited so that we would come into a relationship of dependency upon Him, and He would make up for all that we're lacking.

St. Ignatius said, "Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God, our Lord, and by this means, to save his soul" (The Spiritual Exercise of St. Ignatius, 23). It sounds simple, but just take those first three words, "Man is created." This is where sin started because man doesn't want to be creature. Man wants to be the Creator. Man wants to be God, doesn't he? We can resist the Creator. We can forget we are creatures. We can forget it in the way we live and the way we talk.

Ignatius goes on, "And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created" (23). There it is again. If all these beautiful things God has created helps us attain the end, and the end is God, then we're going to be free. If we are attached to things that will not lead us to God, we will be in bondage. "From this, it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and he ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him" (23). Ignatius is talking about detachment right away in the very foundation of the Exercises. Ignatius goes for spiritual poverty and emptiness, particularly emptiness and detachment from our will, because that is total freedom. The ultimate attachment is our will.

Ignatius says, "For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things and all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it. So that on our part, we want not health, rather than sickness" (23). Can you imagine being that indifferent? All of us pray for health-"Don't let me get sick." Ignatius says we don't want either one. We are indifferent to either one: riches rather than poverty, honor rather that dishonor, a long life rather than a short life. We must come into that indifference. He said, "Desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created" (23). The end for which we are created is, of course, to praise, reverence, and serve God. Then we will see others and everything else in that light-is this helping me to praise, reverence, and serve God, or is this hindering me? That will always be the choice.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Heart-to-heart Listening: The Call to Freedom," 2000.

03-31-03 Some Fruits of Contemplation

March 31, 2003

"Some Fruits of Contemplation"

There are wonderful fruits from contemplation. I think one of the biggest fruits is that our own self-image gets healed. There are so many people today who don't know who they really are. They only know who other people think they are and who their parents have said they are. Sometimes our parents might not have been very complimentary, or classmates have been unkind, and we can grow up with a distorted image of who we are. Sometimes wives draw their identity from their husbands or vice versa.

In Genesis it says that we are made in God's image and likeness (Gn 1:27). We are not made in any person's image. And so unless we get to know God and what He is like, then we won't know who we really are. We draw our true identity from God, from all three Persons of the Trinity. In contemplation it's wonderful to find out who we really are. Jesus Himself taught us this when He asked His apostles, "Who do people say that I am?" Well, they didn't know. Nobody really knew, and so they said, "Well, some say that You're Elijah, some say you might be John the Baptist" (see Mt 16:14-16). Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Well, Peter, who do you say that I am?" Well, poor Peter, he had no way of knowing either except that all of a sudden there was a sovereign movement of God, and he gets that light. It's a revelation, and he knows. He said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Jesus knew right then it had been a sovereign movement of God, and He said, "Flesh and blood did not reveal that to you but My Father in heaven" (Mt 16:13, 15, 17). We need to know our true identity not through flesh and blood but through God.

One time in prayer Jesus said to us, "Why don't you ask the same question, ‘Who do You say that I am?' but ask it of the Father or ask it of Me or of the Holy Spirit. Ask one Person of the Trinity at a time, ‘Who do You say that I am?' " I replied, "You're the only One that really knows because I'm made in Your image and in Your likeness." We go to the entire Trinity because Scripture says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gn 1:26). Our whole relationship and identity is out of that - "Who do You say that I am? Who am I to You, Father? I know that I'm Your child. Who am I to You, Jesus? Who am I to You, Holy Spirit?" When we hear from each Person of the Trinity in prayer, we'll know who we are. This is important to know for then we can stand straight and tall, not bent over, because we will be drawing our full identity from God.

Another beautiful fruit of contemplation is that we get fed. Jesus taught us this through a Scripture that we call the fish fry scene. It's after the Resurrection, and they're out in the boat fishing. They had been fishing all night. It is morning now, and He calls out to them, "Have you caught anything to eat?" They hadn't. These were professional fishermen; they made their living doing this. They knew where to put their nets. Jesus tells them, "Cast your net on the right side" (Jn 21:6). The right side is very important. The right side is our feminine side. It's our receiving side. The left side is more of our masculine side where we do things. I'm speaking (that's the masculine side), and hopefully you're listening (that's the feminine side). Jesus said, "Cast your nets on the right side if you want something to eat." They did, and they were fed. In fact when they hauled the fish in, Jesus already had some fish on the fire ready to feed them. Jesus wants to feed us. Otherwise, how can we feed others? How can we feed His people, even those in our family, those closest to us, if we are starving?

This is effective for contemplative intercession also. There's a beautiful way to intercede in a contemplative way that takes no effort at all. All you do is once you have gone into your inner room, when you've gone into your heart where you know you are in the presence of God, right under the glory spout, so to speak, bring anyone you love (or maybe someone you don't) in there and let them experience what you are experiencing. No words at all. Let them bathe in God's love as you are being bathed in it.

One time I wondered if this really works. The first time I tried this, I tried it by praying for a priest who didn't know I was going to do it. He was very intellectual, very heady, and wasn't really into his heart. So I said to the Lord, "If this kind of prayer really works, I'm just going to bring him into the silence and let him Son-bathe with me." That's what I did. I did that for about two or three weeks. Never said a word in my prayer. I just let him be there receiving from God what I was receiving. After about three weeks, he called and said, "I don't know what's happening to me, but something strange is going on." I said, "Really? Like what?" He said, "When I'm celebrating Mass, and I elevate the host, I feel like I'm going to cry." He said, "Here I am in a church packed with people. I can't do that. I don't know what's happening to me. I just want to adore the Lord. I can hardly go on with the Mass." I said, "Oh, that's nice. I think He's giving you a special grace to really experience His love for you and your love for Him." God was connecting with him Heart to heart. The next day as he distributed Communion and said, "Body of Christ," he could hardly let it go. He just wanted to hang onto it. So God was really moving and healing his heart. So this kind of prayer works. We do it all the time. It doesn't affect our own contemplation because we're not talking. We're just letting people we love be there, too. We're just holding them in our heart in the presence of God's love.

Another beautiful fruit of contemplation is effective discernment. Jesus said, "My sheep know My voice" (Jn 10:27). In other words He's saying, "My sheep experience Me. Through that experience they know My voice." If we are experiencing God's voice, experiencing the Shepherd, then we will have discernment right off. Any voice that is not God's, we will just disregard. It just doesn't count. Discernment is very easy once we really know how the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit communicate with us.

At the beginning of the millennium, Our Holy Father, John Paul II, spoke to the entire Church. He said, "Launch out now into the deep." This is a contemplative speaking. The deep waters. The deep waters are very still waters. They say still waters run very deep. The deeper we go into the waters, the more silent it becomes. Deep is calling unto deep today. We must launch out into the deep waters. Jesus Himself said this to Peter. It was time for Peter to grow and go beyond where he was. He said, "Peter, launch out now into the deep" (see Lk 5:4). This is the invitation that God is giving to us in a special way through our Holy Father.

And so I pray as St. Paul prayed that all of us will come to know and experience the height, the depth, the width, and the breadth of His tremendous, tremendous love that surpasses all knowledge (see Eph 3:18). The mind can never fathom God, but the heart can begin to take Him in so that in this kind of prayer, we may attain, all of us, to the fullness of God Himself. God wants us to be full of Himself. Scripture says His perfect will is our sanctification (see 2Thes 2:13). I used to wonder, "What does that really mean?" The very next line Paul tells us, "It means to be full of God's love"-full of God's love, not of us; to be full of His love, His light, and His grace. And so I believe His invitation to us this weekend is to come and drink deeply. As He said in the Song of Songs, "Drink deeply, my friends. Drink deeply of love" (see Sg 5:1D). Jesus Himself has said not to fear. There is nothing to fear because it has pleased the Father to give us the Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God is within.

Excerpt from Mother Nadine's "Forgiveness Workshop," West Indies, 2001.

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