Actions Speak Louder than Prayer

Flicking through a trashy gossip magazine this morning (don’t ask; no; I didn’t buy it) brought me to a story about Mother Theresa. Apparently, and this all comes to light in a new book about her, based primarily on letters she sent to fellow ministers and confidents. Apparently, or so the book says, she’d spent the last 50 years of her life with “an absence of god in my heart”.

Seeing as many of the most well know pictures of Mother Theresa capture her in serene prayer, this seems a startling revelation; a contradiction even. What really leapt out of the page at me though, while taking in an almost full page spread of her kneeling in prayer in a room empty but for a statue of Christ on the opposite wall, was that the fact that Mother Theresa prayed often hardly defines what she did in life. Her prayers, any of our prayers for that matter, mean jack if we don’t follow through with action. “Her prayers, her communion with God, gave her guidance” you might say. That’s great, but if we spend all of our time “being, or looking for guidance”, what do we actually get done?

Mother Theresa should be remembered for the same reason all true heroes and heroines should be remembered; she took action. More importantly, she took action; she pursued what she knew in heart was the right thing to do, when she didn’t really have to. She could have just stayed at home in Macedonia, praying long distance for the poor, sick and dying of Calcutta…