growing in silence...
So, I receive Daily Spiritual readings every work in my inbox. Some days I don’t have time to read as I am too busy at work and by the time I get home I don’t want to look at a pc. There are three readings, which I suspect are the same used at daily Mass, are followed by a quote from the writings of some insight. Last week one of the readings included a quote from Mother Teresa:
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), Foundress of the Missionary Sisters of Charity
Something Beautiful for God (©The Mother Teresa Committee, 1971)
"He spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve"
I think our Sisters have received that communication of joy that one sees among many religious who have given themselves unreservedly to God. The work is only the expression of the love we have for God. We have to pour our love on someone. And the people are the means of expressing our love for God.
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature, trees, flowers, grass - grow in silence; see the stars, the moon and sun, how they move in silence. Is not our mission to give God to the poor in the slums? Not a dead God, but a living, loving God. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. All our words will be useless unless they come from within - words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God's grace and on our will to be holy. We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. 'I will be a saint' means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.
There is a lot in that reading that just made me pause and reflect. Finding silence and listening is something that I struggle in for one as I am the type of person who will throw themselves into their work as a means of dealing with stress. Well, this last week has been one of a different sort of stress other than the ordinary every day kind and I am just trying to keep what Teresa is saying in the foreground of my mind.