When the world is crazy around you, do as the saints do: be silent and still.
Mother Teresa’s Simple Way of Prayer
In the book of Mother Teresa’s writings entitled No Greater Love, the saint calls us to a certain kind of action: contemplation, stillness, and prayer. She writes …
My secret is very simple: I pray. Through prayer I become one in love with Christ. I realize that praying to Him is loving Him.
Why does she need to pray so much?
Because she desperately needs Christ …
I don’t think there is anyone who needs God’s help and grace as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think that is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength. I rely on Him twenty-four hours a day … All of us must cling to God in prayer.
The weaker Mother Teresa feels, the more fervent the prayer. The movement is inward towards Christ (He becomes the prayer), not outward towards a projection of herself in a state of affairs. Hence this encouragement …
Love to pray. Feel the need to pray often during the day. Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself. Ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough to receive Him and keep Him as your own.
Strength in Weakness
Mother Teresa was a powerhouse when serving God in her life through Sisters of Mercy. A total powerhouse. And yet, time and again, she attributes her strength to prayer, especially contemplative prayer, revealing herself as a giant in her smallness and simplicity …
Prayer that comes from the mind and heart is called mental prayer. We must never forget that we are bound toward perfection and should aim ceaselessly at it. The practice of daily mental prayer is necessary to reach that goal. Because it is the breath of life to our soul, holiness is impossible without it.
Here Mother Teresa tells us how to become saints: the focus on becoming perfect–to ceaselessly aim at it, and we do that through, among other things, daily mental prayer. Here’s more ….
It is only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can cultivate the gift of prayer. Mental prayer is greatly fostered by simplicity–that is, forgetfulness of self by transcendence of the body and of our senses, and by frequent aspirations that feed our prayer … In vocal prayer we pray to God; in mental prayer He speaks to us. it is then that God pours Himself into us.
We cannot give to others what we don’t have. If all we have our our illusions, resentments, and egoistic drives, that’s all we’re able to offer. Therefore, Mother Teresa writes,
Be sincere in your prayers. Sincerity is humility, and you acquire humility only by accepting humiliations. all that has been said about humility is not enough to teach you humility. All that you have read about humility is not enough to reach you humililty. You learn humility only by accepting humiliations. and you will meet humiliation all through your life. the greatest humiliation is to know you are nothing. This you come to know when you face God in prayer.
He Looks at Us and We Look at Him
And what do we do when we face God? When we come to Him as we truly are? …
Often a deep and fervent look at Christ is the best prayer: I look at Him, and He looks at me. When you come face to face with God, you cannot but know that you are nothing, that you have nothing.
Mother Teresa shows us the Way of prayer. To sit in silence, in stillness, realize our bankruptcy, our pain, our inability to do anything without God, and then meet Him where we are. To sit long enough for Him to look at us and for us to look at Him.
As a writer it’s hard to go to the page and feel good enough to do it. It’s hard in any aspect of life to feel that we’ve got what it takes.
I saw something written on a wall once. It said:
Comparison is a thief of joy.
To look at Mother Teresa and see someone who felt so weak and inadequate, and who understood contemplative prayer so well is inspiring for me who is tempted in my weakness to somehow pull myself up by my bootstraps–but it never works.
For those of us looking to create or to bring light to the world, and to become fully alive, fully ourselves, by becoming saints, Mother Teresa’s notes on prayer are essential reading.
This is the way of prayer for Mother Teresa. May it be the Way of prayer for us too. And may the prayers of this blessed saint, who knew prayer so well, and who is so close to God for her love for the poor and destitute, be with us.
St Mother Teresa also understood the Eucharist to be fundamental to her work. Check it out here: link.
