It is very interesting to see how saintly people react to the state of the world and how they reply to less enlightened people who speak to them about the tragedies and sufferings that seem to make life a very sad and insecure experience. Sometimes we read about Mother Teresa of Calcutta being interviewed and having conversations with various people. She can hardly be suspected of being indifferent to human suffering or of being unaware of its extent and severity, and it would be very rash to think that because of her lovely smile and tranquility she herself has no sufferings of her own. What is the secret of the joy of compassionate people who immerse themselves in the sufferings of mankind? The secret of every saint, the source of his strength, the cause of his joy, is of course God. And we are invited, and more than invited, to share this secret, to have a share in this mystery of compassionate peace and joy amidst the troubles of life in the world and in ourselves.
God is the cause of all things, and we know that, but just knowing that truth will not give us the kind of spiritual peace that we long for and are meant to have. Nor is it enough to make us find peace of soul if we know that all good gifts come to us from the Father of Light and that God will keep us safe and bring us to His Kingdom. We cannot be content with the things God gives us. We cannot be content with the peace God gives us. We can only be really at peace and really satisfied when we receive God Himself. If you watch Mother Teresa or any saint facing the situation we are in in this world, even in its modern tragic state, you will find that they discover God everywhere and that they know God not as Creator so much as Love. . .
God is love, and God is in us, and love is the one thing that can answer all the problems in our lives. Our own love is not God, but if genuine it comes from God and joins us with God in one life with Him, immersing us in Him. We cannot see God, but we can give and receive love. We can reply to everything and everyone with love. We can answer all doubts and fears and perplexities with love if we want to. It is very, very simple. Love accepts all things, endures all things, hopes all things. Any frustrations we feel, any complaints we want to make, any dissatisfaction we live with cannot be blamed on our circumstances but is due to defects in our love. “For those who love God, all things work together for good.” (St. Paul)
No matter what our circumstances are—mental, physical, or social—since God loves us and lives in us, we are not lacking in love received. What we lack is the full giving to God of our own love. If we love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, as He commanded us to do, then we should see love, see God, everywhere, even in the atheist. The greatest duty and privilege and joy we have on earth is that of loving God, loving Him above all things, loving Him more than ourselves. Because of the profound mystery of what love is, the more of it we give to God, the more we are filled with Him. Love given and taken are not two separate realities. Love unites those who love in one life, not by cooperation but by a kind of dissolving of each in the other. “I will live in you and you in Me,” Jesus said. It is not just a side by side situation but a real interior union. . .
Supposing, though, we are little children as far as loving God is concerned and cannot, or feel we cannot, pour out the prayer of love for God in our interior prayer and recollection as we should like to. Why not do what Jesus did as a little child? Why not let Our Lady offer us in the Temple? We are familiar with the idea of asking Mary to pray for us, and perhaps we are familiar, as we ought to be, with the fact that if we offer our prayers and good deeds through Her they are magnified and improved before reaching God, as it were. If Mary prays for us, God finds our prayers and gifts more acceptable, but this intervention of Mary is much deeper than that. It is not just a case of our gifts to God being presented to Him by our Mother in heaven. What Our Lady can do, if we want it to be so, is to so change our own gifts, our own love for God, that they become Hers. We can, if we wish, wrap up our love in Mary’s so that despite its extreme poverty, it reaches God as something very great and deep and beautiful. . .
Love for God is the action we are made for, and love for God is a wonderful thing. To make a short or longer prayer of love for God is something tremendous. God’s infinite love is always hovering over us, and even our feeblest efforts to love Him in return bring about something wonderful, whether we actually feel it or not. And when we give everything to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we no longer worry about the feebleness and imperfections of our own love, because we are happy to let God have Mary’s love through what we do, without ourselves having a love like Hers at all. . .
Why not now give God the interior love of your heart through Mary’s hands, and rest in peace in the presence of God, unselfconscious and untroubled by your faults and failings, and not at all straining to reach any intensity or brilliance of your own..
