Excerpt from God's Armor Book by our Mother Foundress

“Draw your strength from the Lord and from His mighty power.”    (Eph 6:10)

Scripture tells us, “Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness; they shall have their fill” (Mt 5:6).  We will always thirst because that’s how God is enticing us, always luring us to come for more, to constantly be refilled.  If our energies are constantly going forth in this battle, in warfare, in ministries, in loving, and in giving, then we have to be filled ourselves.  We can’t give something we don’t have.  It’s that simple.

In the Bible story of the woman and the dragon we see this need to constantly be filled.  “She gave birth to a son… The woman herself fled into the desert, where a special place had been prepared for her by God.  The woman was given the wings of a gigantic eagle so that she could fly off to her place in the desert” (Rv 12:5-6, 14).  The eagle is a symbol of contemplative spirituality.  John the Beloved, the evangelist, is always symbolized as the eagle because he rested and leaned upon the heart of Jesus.  He knew how to listen.  He knew how to receive, and in this kind of love, he was lifted up in to the heart of God.  Contemplative spirituality is resting upon and being lifted into the heart of Jesus.  

St. Paul said, “May He strengthen you inwardly through the working of His Spirit.  May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may charity be the root and foundation of your life.  Thus you will be able to grasp fully, with all the holy ones, the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge, so that you may attain the fullness of God Himself” (Eph 3:16-19).  This is the very heart of contemplative spirituality:  To experience the love that comes from the heart of God.

This is why we see all this joy at Pentecost.  They were being loved as they had never been loved before. The Holy Spirit was pouring forth, filling them with God’s love.  This is where the strength and energy come.  It’s the Holy Spirit who energized us.  So when we are filled with God’s love, it is then that we are strong because it’s His love that is permeating and filling us.

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.”  (1 Jn 4:16)