Prayer, Contemplation, and Action

I believe that in every age Christians need to look to the desert fathers and mothers of their day, to learn from those who have made contemplation the bedrock of their life. These contemplatives are able to offer a profound simplicity and truth to those of us whose lives are too busy, too cluttered. The early monastics spoke to their day and to us; but we have our own mystics today, and it is important to hear them as well.

Again I am drawn to Mother Teresa, a woman who suffered much and who had an astonishing simplicity of belief in Jesus. Her writings continue to challenge and deepen the way that I live out my faith in Jesus.

Here are two of her comments regarding prayer and contemplation:

Often a deep fervent look at Christ may make the most fervent prayer. "I look at Him and He looks at me" is the most perfect prayer....

Through a life of contemplation we come to realize God's constant presence and His tender love for us in the least little things of life: to be constantly available to Him, loving Him with our whole heart, whole mind, whole soul and whole strength, no matter in what form He may come to us. Jesus comes in the bodies of our poor. They are there for the finding. Jesus comes to you and me and, very often, we pass Him by.

Her first devotion was to contemplation of the Jesus who loved her. Her second was to loving Jesus in his "distressing disguise" of the poor and sick. For her, any action of ministry or service flowed out of contemplation and prayer. Prayer and contemplation were essential. She writes,

By contemplation the soul draws directly from the heart of God the graces which the active life must distribute.

She wrote this prayer for the Missionaries of Charity to pray daily before beginning their work among Calcutta's slums:

Dear Jesus,
Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your Spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us
and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us
but only Jesus.
Stay with us
and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching
not by words, but by our example,
by the catching force,
the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.