Blessed Teresa’s Meditations for People of All Faiths

January 26, 2014 at 10:43 am

Past couple of days after mom and I do yoga,  I come back and do the Jesuit Examen:

Review the  prior day and what made me sad, glad, mad. How do I find God and understand myself in relationship to God by feeling those emotions?

Spend a few minutes heightening awareness of how I am in the moment and being grateful.

I conclude with a couple of readings.  One from the Courage to Change and some Mother Theresa quotes from Everything starts with Prayer.  I think the Bikram yoga helps me be clear headed and alert for this exercise and helps the readings resonate more.  Mother Theresa’s quotes are so rich that you can read them every day and get more out of the same ones.  Today I was touched by the following:

1)In most modern rooms you see an electrical light that can be turned on by a switch.  But, if there is no connection with the main power house, then there can be no light.  Faith and prayer is the connection with God, and when that is there, there is service.

Since I have also been working through the 12 steps, this quote connected for me with respect to the 4th step where a searching  and fearless moral inventory is made of one’s self.  We need to flip the switch of prayer that God’s light may illuminate the darkness in our interior of those places we are afraid to go.    What are we afraid to bring to the light of God’s mercy?

2)  You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill yourself, but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless.  To work without love is slavery.

How often I am too busy or rushed to pay attention to people and what they are saying.  I will  not hear God if I am not listening.  Need to slow done.  Do less.  Not be so busy.  Love and reverence those with whom I work.

3)  People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education or position, but they are all the same.  They are people to be loved.  They are all hungry for love.

4) Everything starts from prayer.  Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others.  Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray.

Not sure I ever asked God for love.  I did today.  I ask God to make me aware of how God surrounds us in love and comes to us in love through so many people, events of our day.  Cannot give love if we do not have love.  Love the sentence about people talking about the poor without knowing the poor.  Aren’t we all experts on the subject?!  I certainly do not know the poor. Yet her point is tied to prayer.  We must learn to pray.

5) We have to possess before we can give.  He who has the mission of giving to others must grow first in the knowledge  of God.  She must be full of that knowledge.

6)Love to be true has to begin with God in prayer. If we pray we will be able to love and if we love, we will be able to serve.

7)Whatever religion we are, we must pray together.  Children need to learn to pray and they need to have their parents pray with them.

I regret not praying with you all more.