The Secret of Mother Teresa

God’s plan is for the whole Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to live in you and through you. God wants to be the life, love and power pulsing through you. If we would give Him room and let Him live in and through us we would be perfectly happy, have meaning and purpose in life, be filled with joy, totally at peace, undisturbed by any storm, wise to make the best decisions, powerful to overcome any difficulty, loving, energetic, able to move mountains literally, convert countless souls and have the deepest and best friendships. We could have all this IF we would give ourselves to God more generously in prayer. In prayer we open our soul to be filled and transformed by God. This was the secret to the greatness of Mother Teresa, the Saint whose feast we celebrate today. Mother Teresa arguably, did more good than any other person in the 20th century precisely because she opened up and let God fill her by prayer. A young priest asked her one day, “Mother Teresa, what is your secret?” she looked at him with a twinkle in her eye and replied, “That is very simple: I pray.” Mother Teresa once said: Without God we are too poor to help the poor, but when we pray, God places His love in us. Look, the Sisters are poor, but they pray. The fruit of prayer is love. The fruit of love is service. Only when you pray can you really serve the poor.” Once at a gas station, during a trip Mother Teresa was making, she looked for a long time at the nozzle through which the gas was flowing into the tank and then said, “Look, Father, that’s like blood in the body: Without blood there is no life in the body. Without gas in the car—no driving. But also, without prayer the soul is dead.” Maasburg, Leo. Mother Teresa (p. 80). Ignatius Press.  When asked what prayer was for her, Mother Teresa answered: “God speaks to me—and I speak to Him. It’s that simple. That is prayer.” Prayer is heart-to-heart contact. “If I pray to Jesus, then it’s from my heart to Jesus’ Heart. When I pray to the Mother of God, then it’s from my heart to Mary’s heart. When I pray to my guardian angel, then it’s also heart to heart.” Mother Teresa’s central principle with regard to prayer was this: “God speaks in the silence of our heart, and we listen. Then, out of the fullness of our heart, we speak and He listens. And that is prayer.” Maasburg, Leo. Mother Teresa (pp. 80-81). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition. People often say, “God never speaks to me.” The question is: Do we ever shut up and listen? De we spend time in silence listening to God? Mother Teresa: “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence…We must improve our prayer and, flowing from that, our charity toward others. It can be difficult to pray when we don’t know how, but we can help ourselves through the use of silence. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. This silence takes a lot of sacrifice, but if we really want to pray, we must be ready to take that step now. Without this first step toward silence, we will not be able to reach our goal, which is union with God. We forget that in the silence of the heart God speaks, and from the fullness of the heart we speak. Only when we have heard him in the silence of our hearts, only when we have learned to listen to God in the silence of our hearts, only then can we say: I pray. There is no either/or about prayer and love. We can’t say we have either prayer or love: There is no prayer without love and no love without prayer. 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.” According to Mother Teresa, peace, service, love, faith and prayer all find their origin in silence.