Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well.
Today's meditation remembers Mother Teresa, her spirit and her prayers--the way she was so present to those around her--she calls forth the best in us.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION 770: Mother Teresa
Blessed Among Us
St. Teresa of Calcutta
Founder, Missionaries of Charity (1910–1997)
Mother Teresa, an Albanian-born nun, spent twenty years as a Loreto Sister in her order’s schools in India. One day, in 1946, while traveling by train in Darjeeling in the Himalayas, she suddenly sensed that God “wanted me to be poor with the poor, and love him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.” This “call within a call” inspired her to leave her convent and set out for the byways of Calcutta. Others joined her in what became the Missionaries of Charity. While their work spread around the globe, Mother Teresa remained most identified with her original home for the dying in Calcutta. There, destitute and dying men and women who had lived like “animals in the gutter” were able to “die like angels”—knowing they were valued and loved as children of God.
Long after Mother Teresa’s death, the publication of her private diaries revealed that after her original call, she had spent most of her life in a state of spiritual darkness—even doubting the existence of God. While some were shocked to discover that such a holy woman could suffer such spiritual anguish, others were moved and inspired to consider how faithfully she had pursued her vocation, despite the lack of spiritual consolation. Evidently Mother Teresa came to see this darkness as part of her vocation—an opportunity to share “a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.”
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. By that time she had long been acclaimed as a living saint. She was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016.
“If I ever become a saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”—St. Teresa of Calcutta
Her Daily Prayer
Flood my soul with Thy spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Thine. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus.
One of her favorite prayers:
Radiating Christ
(Written by Bl. Cardinal John Henry Newman)
Dear Jesus, help us to spread Your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with Your Spirit and Life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through us and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel Your presence in our souls.
Let them look up, and see no longer us, but only Jesus!
Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be ours.
It will be You, shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise You in the way You love best, by shining on those around us.
Let us preach You without preaching, not by words but by example,
by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear for You.
Amen.