Love these thoughts on humility from No Greater Love written by Mother Teresa. She writes, personally, from a heart of wisdom, grace, and total humility. Expresses much of what I feel and experience, what so many of us feel and experience. Know you loving, desirous-of-Christ readers will find the following inspiring, also!
"I don't think there is anyone who needs God's help and grace as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think that is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength, I rely on Him twenty-four hours a day. If the day had even more hours, then I would need His help and grace during those hours as well. All of us must cling to God through prayer. My secret is very simple: I pray. Through prayer I become one in love with Christ. I realize that praying to Him is loving Him....
"People are hungry for the Word of God that will give peace, that will give unity, that will give joy. But you cannot give what you don't have. That's why it is necessary to deepen your life of prayer. Be sincere in your prayers. Sincerity is humility, and you acquire humility only by accepting humiliations. All that has been said about humility is not enough to teach you humility. You learn humility only by accepting humiliations. And you will meet humiliation all through your life. The greatest humiliation is to know that you are nothing. This you come to know when you face God in prayer.
"Often a deep and fervent look at Christ is the best prayer: I look at Him and He looks at me. When you come face to face with God, you cannot but know that you are nothing, that you have nothing."
Accept humiliations. I suppose even appreciate them especially much for the gift of humility that they bring us. I also appreciate Mother Teresa realizing that God used her (and no doubt still very much utilizes her in heaven) because she was helpless and weak. This gives me great consolation, for I am so helpless and weak these days, and in actuality have been so all my life, despite the blessings of Jesus' graces and helping me through marvelous and unexpected means, angels, saints, and fellow human beings.
But Mother Teresa's secret is that she prays. Let us all benefit from her secret and to pray and pray. And along with prayer, let us praise God always, for praise can be inherent in prayer. Our prayer can become praise, as much as pain can become prayer. Can pain, then, become praise? I will ponder this insight that came just now. Praise God!
I also love that of knowing that the greatest humiliation is that I am nothing. We all are nothing and we have nothing. All Is God. And that, dear spiritual friends and readers, for whom I pray and thank you for praying for me--for deeper conversions in God's will and to love God and love as God loves--is a truth for which I used to be and just recently again was criticized by someone who struck up a conversation with me.
Many people do not like me to say or write that I am nothing. But it is the truth. Mother Teresa knew that truth and embraced it, and also embraced that we have nothing--all is God's, and if we "possess" any object, person, thing, thought, feeling, or someone, these are actually not "ours" but rather are lent us by God for a breath of temporal time.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Praise God for any and all humiliations given us!
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