Words from Mother Teresa

8/1/64

"Your Lordship,
...

You must have prayed very fervently for me, because it is now about a month that there is in my heart a very deep union with the will of God. I accept not in my feelings, but with my will, the Will of God. I accept His will -- not only for time but for eternity. In my soul -- I can't tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible. -- My feelings are so treacherous. I feel like "Refusing God" and yet, the biggest and the hardest to bear -- is this terrible longing for God. Pray for me, that I may not turn a Judas to Jesus in this painful darkness. I was looking forward to speaking to you. I just long to speak -- and this too He seems to have taken the power from me. I will not complain. I accept His Holy Will just as it comes to me. If you have the time please write -- do not mind my inability to speak to you -- for I wanted to speak -- but I could not...."

- Saint Teresa of Calcutta (because, whether the Church deign it or not, she is a Saint.)

Even Mother Teresa despaired. Even her own suffering made her speechless. But she pressed on.

Let's just shout it out... God is the love of my life! I have no other name for my faith but faith, and despite all of the books I read, the Churches I attend of the philosophies I study, my faith will always remain faith, and my love of God will always stem from pure, sublime experience. The Bible is a wonderful book... but even if the Bible had never existed, here I would be, and my faith would be the same, and my love for you would be the same, and my partnership with God would remain the same. My faith is not built on a book or a congregation; it is built on life. God is my life. When in loneliness or doubt, it is to His undefinable presence that I turn, and it has always been that way, before I even understood what religion was.  Before I even understood the legacy of saints, bodhisattvas, prophets, and miracle workers who have walked the earth, I prayed in the silence of my childhood to give God's unconditional love to the world.

There need to be more voices in the world that show a powerful alliance to love.

There need to be more strong hands to do the lifting.

There need to be more people willing to allow others to be who they are, to breathe a sigh of relief, to show them that God made them this way because nothing is a mistake, and what keeps us from God are not His labels or His laws, but rather, man's labels and man's laws. We are the cause of suffering. We are evil transitioning into love. We are unconscious rocks, and when we awaken to God's presence in the world, only then may we call ourselves Human. Only then do we become the divine whole.

And our spiritual growth, our journey into the divine, never, ever ends.

"The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." -St. Teresa of Avila

God's Wild Flower

As much as I am able to know, I am what I am, and I am willing to wait for what God has planned.

Lately I have been withdrawing from life and many of the people around me. I am taking longer breaks in solitude. It is strange to feel God call to us. It is a voice... like music, which moves through the whole body... and suddenly, I cannot choose anything else, I must go where I am drawn.

"For a long time I wondered why God showed partiality, why all souls don't receive the same amount of graces.

Jesus consented to teach me this mystery. He placed before my eyes the book of nature; I understood that all the flowers that He created are beautiful. The brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily don't take away the perfume of the lowly violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy.... I understood that if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its springtime adornment, and the fields would no longer be sprinkled with little flowers....

So it is in the world of souls, which is Jesus' [God's] garden. He wanted to create great Saints who could be compared to lilies and roses. But He also created little ones, and these ought to be content to be daisies or violets destined to gladden God's eyes. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wants us to be.

I understood that Our Lord's love is revealed as well in the simplest soul who doesn't resist His grace in anything. In fact, since the essence of love is to bring oneself low, if every soul were like the Saints and Prophets who have shed light on the Church, it seems that God wouldn't come low enough by forming only their great hearts. But He created the child who doesn't know anything and only cries weakly, He created poor ignorant persons who only have natural law as a guide -- and it is to their hearts that he consents to come down: Here are wildflowers whose simplicity delights Him....

Just as the sun shines at the same time on the tall cedars and on each little flower as if it were the only one on earth, in the same way Our Lord is concerned particularly for every soul as if there were none other like it. And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to cause the humblest daisy to open on the appointed day, in the same way all things correspond to the good of each soul."

St. Therese of Lisieux, 1873-1897 

May I always be God's wildflower, in his deepest forest, blooming.