The priest making the case for Mother Teresa’s sainthood has called her “an apostle of the ordinary.” What an inviting title! To be an apostle is literally to be “sent,” but what made Teresa of Calcutta ordinary was what she was sent to do: one-on-one, she practiced love.
From her journals we have learned other things about her. Perhaps the most intriguing is that after her mystical experiences in the 1940s, she knew a lifetime of darkness and silence, things we never knew while she was engaged in the ministry to which she had been sent. The silence she bore inspired her to serve. Yet she spoke of it only in private. We now know she lived most of her life feeling “bewildering rejection and even complete abandonment,” experiences most of us confess knowing well. Still, she was sent out to change the world, and she did so, one single heart at a time. The business card she handed out to enquiring visitors did not have her name on it. It contained instead the core principles of her spirituality. It began, “The fruit of silence is prayer.” She used to talk about five silences: of the ears, eyes, mouth, mind, and heart.
What silences do you experience? Are there times your ears hear no voice from God, your eyes see no vision, and your mouth does not taste that the Lord is good? Have you known a silent mind, or a heart unable to feel? We tend to mistrust silence. Silence sounds like guilt, ignorance or, worse, rudeness. But silence can be the instrument of our calling. In the absence of God’s voice, not knowing when or even if the Master will return, we love one-on-one. How ordinary!
May you find God’s silence today in ordinary, one-on-one relationships, and in that quiet place discover the strength to carry on. Amen.
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