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Committed Sustained Informed - Intercession
A New Season
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"A New Season"

"A New Heart for Love"

          Because "God is love" and He desires me to experience the profundity of His love, there is an essential, sacred work that needs to take place within me. In particular this is true for one called to be a contemplative intercessor. This work is "a profound spiritual transformation which God works within [me] by means of " the breath of his Spirit" (Pope John Paul II; General Audience, August 10, 1988).

           This "work" is what God speaks of through the Prophet, Ezekiel: "I will give you a new heart" (Ezek. 36:26). This new heart is God's gift to me. It is "a new life which is life in the spirit and in truth, a life worthy of "true adorers of the Father" (John 4:23)" (JP II; General Audience, 8-10-88). In our English language the root of the word, adore, means "to pray". True adorers of the Father are true "pray"-ers. Deep love and deep prayer go hand in hand.

          I need a new heart capable of  being filled completely with the "genuine aromatic nard" of God's love (see John 12:3).This is a heart of authentic interiority: A heart capable of living and praying from the depths of New Covenant love; a heart that lives always in perpetual remembrance and awareness of the truth that God is always present to me; a heart capable of picking up the "heart thoughts" of God. The charism of intercessory prayer can only be lived effectively through a newly created heart--a heart that can hold the promises of God, can pray for them in persevering faith, and can experience their fulfillment. 

           Rev. 21:5, says, "Behold, I make all things new." Since God is love, it makes sense, then, that love makes all things new: "He will...renew you in his love" (Zeph. 3:17). God delights in making me new. He desires to give me a heart capable of holding the love of God and the love of humanity in a single embrace (for, this heart is to be the place of a sacred encounter between God and humanity); a heart that can both identify and empathize with humanity, and therefore intercede effectively for others. 

          Indeed, God wants to plant a new "vineyard" deep within me that is truly His dwelling place; a "garden heart" of 'fragrance, flower and fruitfulness' where love, beauty, truth and mystery are found, and where the "flowers of renewal" bud forth and blossom; an inner space of everlasting attachment to Jesus, the "vine" who produces; a place of "Eucharistic intimacy", bearing abundant fruit through intercession.      

Questions:

1)   What aspects of a new heart can I identify as being present within me already?

2)   Where does my heart still need growth?

Scriptures:

Any scripture from the text; Acts 13:22; Phil.1:7; 1 Pet. 3:15

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