You who live within my heart,
Awaken me to the immensity of your spirit,
To the experience of your living presence!
Deliver me from the bonds of desire,
From the slavery of small aims,
From the prison of fear and ignorance,
From the delusion of egohood!
Enlighten me with the light of your wisdom,
Suffuse me with the incandescence of your love,
Which includes and embraces the darkness,
Like the light that surrounds the dark core of the flame,
Like the love of a mother that surrounds
The growing life in the darkness of her womb,
Like the earth protecting the tender germ of the seed.
Let me be the seed of your living light!
Give me the strength to burst the sheath of selfhood,
And like the seed that dies in order to be reborn,
Let me fearlessly go through the portals of death,
So that I may awaken to the greater life:
The all-embracing life of your love,
The all-embracing love of your wisdom.
When Mother Teresa was asked what would happen to her congregation after she had gone, she is said to have responded:
"A person emptier than myself will come along."
The implication here is that the greatness of a person lies in the depth of his or her own self-emptying. Another implication is that what is emptied of oneself will be filled with the self of God. Poverty as a chosen life-style is precisely this:
"To empty oneself of all that one is and has so that all will be at the disposal of the Lord."