This is the third blog in a series about Mother Teresa. I continue to be impressed by her love, courage, compassion, and Christian dedication to the poor of India. In studying her theology, I have been able to identify prayer beliefs and their impact on our relationship with God, the connections between love and our quest for peace in a darkened world, and how our futures should be based on forgiveness. It is my sincere desire to try to be ever faithful in my own religious journey of prayer, love, and forgiveness.
Through our prayers, we seek a oneness with God. If we do not pray, our bodies, homes, and countries are without foundations. As we listen with our hearts and hear to understand everything about our lives, we learn that Christ thirsts for us to be one with Him. We cannot know what He wants to be for us, nor what He wants us to be for Him. However, when we withdraw to that place where we can sit in silence and aloneness with God, we can find connection to Him away from the noise and agitation of the world. In order for God to enter our hearts, we need to be silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. Only in these concepts can we feel His total love.
No matter how small our acts of love, every act is a work for peace. If our elected officials aren’t compassionate enough to do the right things, then we need to do works of love ourselves, one person at a time. Kindness and mercy, working together, are the beginning of peace. Anyone coming to us on a daily basis should leave us feeling better and happier. We become a living expression of God’s love as we seek peace in the darkened world. We are all called to work for peace by being meek and humble like Christ. Humility leads to unity, and unity leads to peace.
Many people waste their lives worrying about the present and fearing the future. Taking the time to contemplate our present circumstances and preparing for a positive future life allows Christ to live in us with His passion, love, and humility. He can pray with us, be with us, and sanctify us and others through us. Forgiveness should be at the heart of our relationships. We need to excuse rather than accuse, forgive and ask to be forgiven. Those who have hurt us may never ask for forgiveness, but we must offer it to them as a gift.
Probably the largest form of Western poverty is spiritual poverty. Many people do not believe in God, nor pray to Him. There is an extreme lack of caring in many today, and most troubling, many people of the Western culture selfishly think the more wealth they can accumulate, the happier they will be. One of the reasons many people cannot understand why people are poor is because they’ve never had to suffer beyond all human needs. As these people realize their lives have no substance, mental issues and economic problems combine to form troubling issues for the country. Depression and acts of violence have become prevalent in our country in particular. Poverty of the heart is perhaps one of the most difficult human problems to relieve and to defeat in the world’s population as a whole.
In studying Mother Teresa’s beliefs and deeds of love, I have realized that I need to do more to help others, to be firm in the promises of my baptism and confirmation, and to be more committed to my love of Jesus Christ. In my daily prayers, I ask God for help to be a better Christian, and I ask Him to use me as an agent of peace in this troubled world. Peace is only possible when we all work together with Christ by our side and God’s love blessing our hearts. I pray we all see that the light will overcome the darkness with God’s love and our own humble deeds. We save ourselves by saving the world.
Anna Hartt
