The expression entered my mind and has remained in a haunting, echoing way. It keeps repeating the exact same phrase:  “Empty yourself and I will fill you.” Is it “ yourself” or “your self?”

No matter, the message continues and begs – nay, commands – to be analyzed. Jesus put the words in my head and I look to others to help me understand them. My own dissection provides me the greatest clarity. I can’t help but believe the Holy Spirit put the message in my mind and is providing me my own analysis to figure out what I am supposed to do with it.

“Empty yourself and I will fill you.” To understand the whole, I need to explore the pieces. I am reminded that the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “Only to the extent that we have emptied ourselves can God fill us with Himself.”

Empty

Empty can be a verb or an adjective. When the verb happens, the condition described by the adjective exists. To vacate is to create a vacant condition; to empty the heart and soul is to leave it open to be occupied by Jesus. To empty is to clear out, leaving nothing left. To empty is to void whatever existed before.

Understanding the meaning and undertaking the required actions are different and light years apart; understanding meaning is passive while putting that understanding into motion requires action. We must empty ourselves of pride, fear, regret, worry, anger, lust, greed, fatigue, ambition, ego, sadness, sorrow, depression, numbness, jealousy, desire, chaos, possessiveness, worry, helplessness, confusion, and emptiness.  The action required runs contrary to inertia, status quo, comfort, humility, predictability, certainty…all the things that help us move from one normal day to another. Nature abhors a vacuum; as we empty, we must also fill with great intention, lest old habits and new evils will fight to get into spaces that are to be occupied by Jesus.

Yourself or your self

Whether one word or two, consider the two words involved: “your” and “self.” 

Your: a possessive word describing something that belongs to you. You own it. It is…yours. One of the most important things that belongs to you is freewill, which is critical to all that is involved in the seven-word message.

Self: a word that reveals identity, ego and a natural tendency to narcissism. Pride is born here, and pride is the foundation upon which all the other deadly sins stand; it is the seed from which they grow.

Yourself: defined as “an emphatic appositive of you,” here rests the certainty that the action of “empty” is not delegated to others but is assigned to you. No one can or should do it for you.

And

The great connector that joins action to promise; it unites that which you are to do with what the result will be, making the two sides of the statement inexorably joined.

I

A singular word, “I” refers to a specific person, and in this sentence it is who is about to make a promise. Jesus is promising that He alone will take action as a result of me taking action; He will follow through on your actions. He is not committing anyone else to accomplish what the statement declares – “I will fill you”—including each of us. The challenge is to keep ourselves empty so that He can fill us.

Will

There is no uncertainty in “will.” It is a verb of commitment, promise, covenant, assurance, the latter of which empowers us to do what Jesus told his followers often to do:  fear not.  Importantly, the verb is future tense, a not-so-gentle reminder that what He commits to is in the future, after we have done our part.

Fill

When completed, there will be no room for anything else, every space will be occupied – for this, we are talking about the space of heart, soul and mind. As Jesus said, recorded in Matthew 27: 37-38, “Jesus declared, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  In Acts 4:31, we learn, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

You

Jesus’ commitment is to you.  Your action yields his response to fulfill his promise. This is no cold, contractual arrangement, but a result of a personal relationship with, and trust in, Jesus and his love for you.

There is a lot to this promise of being filled. The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “Would you not like to be, right now, just as you came from the hands of God at the baptismal font, with no worldly wisdom yet gathered to your mind, so that, like an empty chalice, you might spend your life filling it with the wine of His love? The world would call you ignorant, saying you knew nothing about life. Do not believe it – you would have life! Therefore, you would be one of the wisest persons in the world.”