The Highest Form of Wisdom

Teachings
05-01-06 The Highest Form of Wisdom

May 1, 2006

"The Highest Form of Wisdom"

Wisdom is surrender. There are different levels of surrender and the highest form of surrender will always be the wisdom of the cross. This is a hidden battle. Almost no one will know about it. It is going on in side of me; it has to do with the interior life. It is the healing of my heart. Our hearts comes forth wrapped in so many fig leaves because of so many hurts, because of so many reasons that to open to this grace, to this kind of vulnerability, can be difficult at best. It is a process and it takes God's love and His grace. We must remember that this is what God wants for us; He really wants this for us. God wants us to have this wisdom of the heart. All of God's Confirmation gifts, by the way, are gifts of the heart. When He gives us these gifts they come right into the heart. The heart then is what informs the mind and then the mind can execute. It can do it. But the gift operates in the heart. God is a heart person. He wants us to communicate with Him heart to heart. He desires that we become one with His heart. He wants us to have His heart. He knows that our hearts must be healed. This is our inheritance. He paid a high price - a very high price - for this inheritance so that we can glorify Him in our bodies. Remember that the glory of God is man fully alive. He paid this high price so that we can have His life in abundance in our own bodies.

We need to desire this union. We need to beg for this grace for surrender. Everything is a grace. We just have to ask, ask, ask. We have to come to a point where we know that, "I cannot handle this anger any more. I have been stuffing it and stuffing it but it is coming out in other ways. I am projecting it upon other people. I cannot go on being a hypocrite. I cannot pretend. I cannot grin and bear it. I cannot." When you get to that point, you are really at the beginning of Wisdom. We begin to realize that this is God's work. I realize that I can come to Him and say, "Lord, I have all of this anger. Help me! Without You, Lord, I can do nothing. I am getting wisdom now. I am starting to really believe that I can do nothing." Remember, with God all things are possible. All things are possible.

We live in a society that makes it difficult for the gospel to be lived out. There is nothing in our society that really supports the gospel. If you want to live Christianity to the fullest you are going to be counter-cultural, aren't you? You are going to be swimming up stream. I was happy when I heard that the word Omaha is an Indian name that means ,"Going against the current!"

Because of the society in which we live, "surrender" sometimes brings up images that make us think of humiliation or defeat. If we have that concept it can be a real block within us to surrender. We may think that to surrender means that we have a defeatist attitude. We may think that surrender only comes when somebody is out to get us. We say to ourselves, "I am defeated. I might as well give up now because God is God and I am not. He eventually will have His way. I give up because I have to." If I have this kind of concept of God, that He is out to get me, kind of like a policeman, and I am just going to get tired and give up, that can block my surrender to God. It may cause me to yield to a more destructive pattern that I have somehow developed through the years. If I have a pattern of unforgiveness, to which I cling so that it is constantly in my life or if I bring that same situation repeatedly to the confessional, there may be an element within me that has not been surrendered to God. Perhaps God must show to me this pattern, which has to come into surrender, because it has a grip on me. It might even begin to poison me if I cannot break out of it. On my own I cannot break out. If I can see the symptoms, if I can see the pattern, I need to bring it to Him just to talk about it. That is where I begin. It might be that I have too much resentment. Perhaps I have too much fear. Fear is probably the biggest block to surrendering to God. In the beginning it seems that even Our Lady had some element of fear because the first thing the angel said to her was, "Do not fear, Mary." If I can identify a voice inside of me that is saying, "I am afraid! I am not going to have control. I don't know You that well, Lord. You are going to take me where I do not want to go. You are going to take me to something unknown. What am I going to hang on to, Lord, if I let go and just surrender to You?" then that is where I begin. We have so many fears. We must begin right where we are. We do not have to go to where God is. He will come to us where we are. He is always the God who comes.

Surrender is definitely an inside job. We want to come in to His kingdom within. The kingdom of God is within. We know that this is God's perfect will. Jesus taught us to pray, "Father may Your kingdom come. May it come in me. Through me, may it come to others." This is another way that we can gain territory for others. We want to beg for these graces, these lights, these gifts. God's love will come and His perfect love will cast out the fear. We are always in the process of conversion, which is the process of becoming a child.

There is a close relationship between being a child and being surrendered. Children are surrendered. They are always holding up their arms. They want to be picked up and not hang on to anything. They are incredibly free. This is what we want. However, there is the adult in us.

I had to smile the first time I read this. This is from Saint Augustine before his conversion. He said that the sin he knew was more to be desired than the joy he did not know. Have you ever had that happen? "I really like it here, Lord. If I give this up or if I surrender this, I do not know what will be in store for me. Maybe I am not going to be happy. I am finding this pleasant. I am comfortable." We have all sorts of sophisticated ways of saying what Augustine did. "The sin that I know is more to be desired than the joy that I do not yet know." That says a lot about us. We might cling to something that we know simply and only because we are afraid of something we do not yet know. That is where the fear is. That, in itself, can cause us to resist surrender to God - the letting go of the control because we do not know. We are so used to having our minds know things. To surrender is to take off our shoes. It is part of responding, "Here I am, Lord. Behold Your servant, Your handmaid." It is scary. Look at the fear and bring the fear to God. Do not be afraid to say to God, "I am afraid. I am afraid."

After all the discernment that was done for me - a whole year of private retreats, thirty days of a devil's advocate board, seven more months and finally the green light from Rome and it was the last week I was in the cloister. I knew that I was coming home; I knew the exact date. Suddenly, I found that I was not spending much time in the presence of the Lord in the tabernacle. I was the last one in the chapel and the first one to go. After a couple of days of that I thought, "Hmmmm. My activity has changed a little bit after sixteen years in the cloister. I wonder what is wrong." Self-knowledge goes a long way. I spotted something was wrong. I put my head in my heart and said, "What is it?" My heart just let me know, "You are afraid. You are afraid to leave the cloister. You are leaving without anybody! You have safety here. You have a beautiful community. You are leaving with only God's word, God's promise. You do not even know for sure if you can trust Him. You are going home. Your Catholic family and friends are not there anymore. They are off in other vocations. Your own biological family is not Catholic. You are afraid. You are going out there alone. You do not quite believe that the Trinity is going to be with you like They said." That was wonderful for me because my heart spoke truth. I had to accept, "I am afraid." So I marched right back into the chapel, knelt right before the Blessed Sacrament there in the tabernacle and I said to God. "You have been so good to me. You have given me so many words and so many promises and so many confirmations but I am afraid." The minute I said that to Him He flooded me with such peace and such joy and such love that I am here to tell you today that I have never known fear since. God wants us to be free.

This kind of surrender helps us to make that Passover. We must do it every day. It is not a once and for all. Every day we must say, "Father, into Your hands. Into Your hands!" I remember when my own daddy was teaching me how to swim. He was in the water, holding up his arms. "C'mon, jump. C'mon, jump! C'mon, jump!" I did not know how to swim. I was scared to death of the water, but this was my daddy. He was going to catch me. If only we can keep our eyes on our Abba! "Into Your hands, into YOUR hands, Abba, I am giving my life. I am trusting You." Father always knows best!


Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Wisdom Instructs Her Children," Omaha, NE, 2005




04-24-06 Consecrated in the Spirit

April 24, 2006

"Consecrated In The Spirit"

Peter, as the first Pope said, in 1 Peter 1, "Consecrated by the Spirit to a life of obedience..." Peter had learned fast. That upper room experience taught him something. "Consecrated by the Spirit to a life of obedience (that is docility to Jesus Christ) and purification with His blood." That became a way of life for Peter and the apostles of the early church. The apostles were consecrated by the Spirit to a life of obedience. We are, too, by the grace of Baptism. We are consecrated people. We are people consecrated to a life of obedience - a life of surrender, a life of accepting God's will. Paul understood this. He said, "Commit everything to the Holy Spirit." Commit everything to Him - even every thought! This is quite a challenge. Have you ever tried it? Have you ever asked yourself, before you speak it out, "Is this under the protection, under the canopy, of God's love?" Consecrated is an interesting word. It means to be set aside - set aside for holiness. Ready to do His will! Holy, Holy, Holy. Be holy. You are consecrated.

We understand the consecration at Mass. The bread and the wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus. But we are consecrated too. God wants to change us into Jesus - into the body and blood of Jesus. He uses us in that wine press, to produce the wine. With Him, we become the grain of wheat so that we can become the bread. When we pray, "Lord, they haven't any wine," we must remember that we are going to be called to be victims of our own intercession. We are the ones who will produce that wine. We must become that bread.

There is a beautiful scripture that says, "My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trial." When we ask God to do things, prepare to be the victim lambs of that intercession. Prepare to purchase that grace. Jesus did and He will continue doing it within us now. "Be sincere of heart, undisturbed in times of adversity and accept whatever befalls you. For, in fire (that is God's love) gold is tested" (Sir 2:5 ).

In Zephaniah 1:7 we read, "Silence in the presence of the Lord, God! For near is the day of the Lord! Yes, the Lord has prepared a slaughter feast. He has consecrated His guests." Pray this through in your own private prayer time sometime. Guess who will be used for the feast? Guess who will be slaughtered? It is us! We must be used to feed His sheep. We must be His lambs. The Church is starving spiritually. Mother Theresa of Calcutta saw that right away. We, in America, are the poorest nation in the world, she said, spiritually speaking. Our people are starving. Our sheep are starving. Our lands are starving. We need to become Eucharist so that they can be fed. All this is accomplished by doing - simply doing - whatever He tells you. Ask the Lord for that desire, whatever it is, to want to do whatever. Ask that you may desire it!

Love wants to please the beloved. This can be a suffering love. It definitely was for Our Lady. It was a tremendous cross for her in her obedience to God. We see it fully at the foot of the cross when the prophetic word was very visible, "Your own heart a sword shall pierce." It is the sword of the Spirit. It is the sword of love. Love is what always pierces our hearts. Have you ever noticed that when you are in the most pain it is from people you love? It is not going to be from a church out there or from a stranger. It is going to be from people you love. It may be from animals you love or children you love. It will be from somebody close. Only love can pierce the heart and there is power that comes out of that kind of piercing. It happens when God's Spirit is leading us into situations where we would rather not go or to do what we would rather not do. But this kind of love (God's piercing) covers a multitude of sins. "Greater love than this," Jesus said, "no one has." If your heart is being pierced know that you are being used deeply by God. You hardly even have to pray. You are just living fully in intercession. You are in the full power of intercession. You have the burden. God might reveal to you what that burden is for. That pain might be caused from one person but it might be used for hundreds of others. God can apply it to so many other people or He may just use it for one. That is up to the Lord. Your surrender will bring forth God's love. It casts that Fire upon the earth that He so desires go forth from the piercing of the heart.

Surrender comes when humility confronts pride. It is obedience confronting disobedience. It will be the gateway to heaven here and now. It will open the doors to God's grace. It opens the door primarily and first of all for us. Every yes will bring us that peace. Every yes, every surrender, will be the experience of Jesus when He said to the thief, "This day (right now) you will be with Me in paradise." We are with Him. "All the way to heaven is heaven," Catherine of Sienna said. He is the way. We are people consecrated to this truth.


Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Wisdom Instructs Her Children," Omaha, NE, 2005


04-17-06 I Don't Think I Can Do This

April 17, 2006

"I Don't Think I Can Do This!"

You do not need to be afraid. God will never ask something that we cannot do or without giving us the grace to do it. Sometimes, though, it is the tiniest things that are the most costly. They are hidden. Nobody knows about them. There is something about big things! Everybody knows about them. Everybody knows I am being a martyr; I am going to get help. I am going to get pity. I am going to get consolation! I am going to get support. In the hidden things we pray, "No one knows I am dying, Lord, except You." Sometimes, this is the most difficult because we are dying to any self-glorification, any self-affirmation. We had a friend one time who actually told me that he really thought that he could never be called to the ministry of intercession. I said, "Why not?" He told me, "There is no glory in it. There is no thanks in it. Nobody even knows that you are praying for them. I need a ministry that is more visible." This is a very invisible ministry. It is not, however, invisible to God. God will never, never be outdone in generosity.

I will tell you a story about an incident that was very costly for me but it set me free in many ways. In case you are struggling with something little, know that God does not see it that way at all. It can bring much grace for His church. This story is about bells. As a college student one summer, I went to work at a nice, big insurance company. My father dropped me off that morning - the first morning of the job. It was a very large insurance company and they had bells. There were bells for everything- bell when you go to your desk, a bell for coffee break, a bell when it is lunchtime, a bell when lunch is over. Bells! I found it to be so impersonal; there seemed to be no relationships. You could not make up your own mind or decide for yourself. It seemed to me that you were stripped of freedom. It really bothered me. In fact, it bothered me so much that at mid-afternoon, I called my father and said, " Can you come and get me? I am going to quit. It's these bells! I feel like a little puppy dog. They ring the bell and you go!" So I quit. I got another job for the summer and then went back to college. A couple years later, I was called to the Catholic Church and a couple of years after that, into the cloister. The first thing that comes in the cloister is - you have it - bells! It is the only way they communicate. Bells! Everything is bells. Even more bells than the insurance company! Bells to get up, bells to go to breakfast, bells to go to prayer, bells for the Angelus! And there are all different kinds of bells. You learn the signals for the different bells. Bells all day long! I thought, "Oh God! I cannot believe You did this!" I was really sweating it out because I knew that I could not just quit, or call up my daddy and say, "Please come and get me!" But I did call up the heavenly Father and I said, "Help! I am in trouble."

Take it to God right away. He did give me the light. He gave me a beautiful grace. He said, "This is My voice! Do not look at it as just a bell! This is My voice. Every time you hear it, know that I am calling you. I am calling." He made it so personal. He knows I like that personal relationship - that one-on-one personal relationship. He said, "It is I! It is I! I am calling you to get up. Remember your dad used to say, ‘Rise and shine, darling! It is time to get up!'" He said, "This is what I am saying when you hear that bell in the morning, ‘Rise and shine! It is time to get up!'" It made all the difference in the world. After that, I did not hear the bells anymore. I heard only, "God is calling! God is calling! God is calling!" And I was free. Hopefully, I got some graces for other people for their freedom and their struggles too.

Do not overlook little disturbances and say, "Oh, it is just little. It is nothing," and put it on the back burner. It is the little things that can really purchase souls because they are costly to us and they bring us closer to God. When we draw closer to God, His grace will be there to help us in that surrender.


Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Wisdom Instructs Her Children," Omaha, NE, 2005




04-10-06 I Surrender

April 10,2006

"I Surrender!"

Every surrender, every yes, will bring Jesus. He is the God who comes. He is the God who comes. The Lord showed me that we enter into the mystical priesthood. When we are baptized, we are baptized priest, prophet and king, aren't we? We enter into that relationship. It is like a mystical priesthood. He showed me that every ‘yes' brings Jesus more and more into my heart. It brings more of God into my heart. It can also bring Him into the hearts of others because we are standing in the gap for them, for the church. We are standing in the gap for God's people. We become, literally, the heart of the mystical body. What happens to me can happen to others. Do you follow that? That is the beauty of the mystical body. We are not in this alone.

The Little Flower discovered this one time in one of the psalms when she read, "Draw Me." The very next line read, " We follow." Wherever we are, personally, with God, all those that have been given to our care will follow. We may never know who they are in this life-time, yet they will receive that same grace. Our yes is not just a personal yes any more than Our Lady's yes was personal. Her yes was for all of us. It was for the world. She is still giving Jesus to the world and to all of us in special ways. Every ‘yes' will bring Jesus into the hearts of all mankind. It becomes apostolic - very apostolic. And it is very simple. At times it will be costly. Calvary was costly. But Pentecost was worth it.

Our Lady wants Jesus to grow within us. We want to allow Jesus to have the freedom within us that He loves. He is used to it! In Nazareth He grew. In the interior life, He wants to continue growing in us. Give Him the freedom to do so - so that wisdom will grow. Wisdom grows if we allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit. Jesus was always led by the Spirit. He is a lamb; He is wisdom enfleshed. He is wisdom incarnate. He is modeling for us by the way He was always led. The scriptures are full of the ways He was led. It is wisdom at its best when we allow ourselves to be led.

Jesus was led out of Nazareth. Finally, one day, it was time to go. I asked Him one time, "How did you know it was time to go? You were there so long! It was such a tremendous mission. It seems to me that You wanted to go at the age of twelve but You returned to Nazareth and were there year after year after year! At the age of twenty You still had not been called out. Everybody wants to leave home when they are twenty or twenty-one, but You remained." He was thirty years old before He was called out! "How in the world did You know? " I asked Him. He said, "The same way that you know you are being called out of the cloister. You know the Spirit." He waited upon the Spirit. The Spirit led Him out of Nazareth. The Spirit led Him into the desert. The Spirit led Him to Calvary. The Spirit will lead us there too - to the cross. All power and all wisdom comes from the cross.

I started visiting people that were founders and foundresses of other orders when I came home from the cloister. My spiritual director thought it would be good for me to meet some of these people and to see how the Spirit was moving in the new life in the church. They all really seemed to know what they were doing. They really seemed very intelligent. They really had it together. But the conclusion that I was drawing was that they were prepared and I was not. I was beginning to wonder if God had made a mistake and I started to waver. The Lord asked me, "What is wrong?" I began to pour out my heart. "I just don't have wisdom!" "I don't think I am qualified. There is something wrong here. Would You give me wisdom if You really want me to stay out here and do what You want me to do?" He said, "Oh, I would be happy to give you wisdom." I said, "Could I have a scripture that would confirm that, that would really back that up - what You just said?" (It takes us a while to believe Him.) He said, "Yes, I will give you a scripture!" He gave me Isaiah 53. Well, I was so excited! I did not know what Isaiah 53 was but I was staying at a place where there were a lot of hermitages and I could not wait to get back to look up Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 is the very heart of this charism. It is all about the Lamb, the suffering servant, the Lamb that was led to the slaughter and opened not his mouth. That is wisdom in the eyes of God. "Oh!" I said to the Lord, "I guess maybe I have that! I can let You lead me." "That is it," He said. "That is it."

Jesus grows in us through our daily dying. "Pick up your cross daily," He said, "and follow Me." He will see that we have a cross. He can find all sorts of little things - little splinters that can rub us the wrong way. He has all kinds of ways to have us say, "Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord!" It becomes our theme song, doesn't it? He loves it. He said, "If you do not die daily, you are going to remain alone. But if you can say yes, if you let this dying process continue, if you allow your life to proclaim the death of the Lord, you will bear much fruit for the kingdom - for the Father's greater honor and glory. In John 15 He tells us, "The Father is pleased that you have become My disciples and bear much fruit." There is no joy like giving joy to the Father. We hear that the Father is pleased! We all want to hear that. He is pleased because there is only one fruit and that is Jesus. In the word obedience, O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E, in the very center of that word, right in the heart of the word is the word DIE! D-I-E. That is what we are talking about. It is very sacrificial. It will bear tremendous fruit.


Excerpt from Mother Nadine's, "Wisdom Instructs Her Children," Omaha, NE, 2005


06-05-00 We Need the Pentecost Experience!


June 5, 2000


"We Need the Pentecost Experience!"

"Our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 12:29). This is part of God's nature-He is fire. Isaiah said that his lips were purified by fire, by the presence of God (Is 6: 6-7). There is a purification process. Jeremiah held the Word of God in his heart and said it was as though it were a devouring fire. It just burned within him and when God spoke, He said, "Is not my word like fire?" (Jer 23:29) When we really hear the Word of God, it has an affect on us. It sets us aflame. On the road to Emmaus the disciples said, "Were not our hearts burning?" (Lk 24:32)

In the Song of Songs, we hear that love is a flame, it is a fire, and Scripture says that great waters cannot extinguish it (see Sng 8:6-7). We see the two properties, water and fire, meet. The fire is more powerful than the water, and the fire conquers it. It is a tremendous flame of love! All of us in the Church, in the Mystical Body of Christ, carry the torch now. The flame has been passed on into our hearts, and it is through many, many revelations of God's flaming touch of His love and many purification processes that finally bring us to the full baptism of the Spirit in fire, to the fullness of the Calvary experience.

One time I heard some of the leaders in the Charismatic Renewal apologizing that they had led their people to the Pentecost experience when they should have led them to the Calvary experience. I felt like saying, "Don't apologize. You know that even the Apostles other than John couldn't make it there either." We need to have the power of love. We need to have the Pentecost experience first before we can lay down our lives in that kind of love, that kind of intensity, that kind of passion. We have to go through this purification process before we can get that kind of holiness, that kind of zeal, that kind of commitment to the Lord. So the leaders in the Charismatic Renewal were leading us correctly. We had to have Pentecost first, and then the Spirit Himself will take us through the purification process. He is the Fire; He is the Flame of God.

This is what it means to be consecrated. In the Old Testament, fire would consecrate the sacrifice. It is the fire of the Holy Spirit within us now, the flame of God's love, that makes us a consecrated people. We are a holy, consecrated people because of that Flame that is constantly making us into a living sacrifice. "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice . . ." (Rom 12:1). Offer spiritual sacrifices. We cannot offer spiritual sacrifices except through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now that we have the Spirit within us, He can tell us what to offer. He can do it through us and with us and in us so that we become a living, holy, consecrated sacrifice to the Father. This is pure worship.

In the first or second century, Jesus appeared to Origen and said, "He who is close to Me is close to the Fire." Any of us who are close to Jesus are close to the Fire because He is the Flame. So if we want to go through this transformation process and be changed into that Flame, into that pure Love, then we have to get close to the Fire, closer and closer and closer.

Excerpt from "A Flaming Heart," Contemplative Album, Omaha, NE, 1984.