Words from Mother Teresa

The fruit of silence is prayer

The fruit of prayer is faith

The fruit of faith is love

The fruit of love is service

The fruit of service is peace

"Mother Teresa, Come be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta", page 315 

How often I have sat and contemplated my navel or wallowed in self introspection. Perhaps I have been trying too hard to ‘pray’. I call it prayer, but it is probably more akin to letting my thoughts drift. God waves in and out but I rarely remain focused.

When I reflect on Mother Teresa’s words above, I wonder if my lack of peace - spiritual and emotional peace - is because the bedrock of silence and prayer is not there. There have been times in my life when I thought in some small way I was trying to show my love for and faith in God by serving others, (e.g. temporary jobs as a student working at an old people’s home, befriending a youth from a children’s home). Now looking back over the years with - if not more wisdom - at least more well trodden experiences, I regard those juvenile efforts as quite tokenistic. Were not my motives shallow and rootless, not borne out of a genuine love of God, self and others? Or a cry from the soul, a desire to increase my faith and awareness of God’s presence by ever more service and a loving attitude towards others? Now, epochs later, it all seems to have been more a case of secular altruism than anything spiritual.

I now believe that we have to start at the top, which means at the bottom, in our quiet selves, in silence, in prayer, as Mother Teresa so well knew. While she may not have experienced that interior 'peace' throughout her life – rather struggle and alone-ness within – perhaps her peace was that acceptance of God’s will, ultimately the greatest peace there is?   

May God bless her... you and I too.