April 8, 2011 Friday: 4th Week of Lent (A)

God's Test for Us
from Mother Teresa's A Simple Path

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad: everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God creates us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other. Any negligence in loving can lead someone to say Yes to evil, and when that happens we have no idea how far it can spread. That's the sad part. If someone chooses evil, then an obstacle is set up between that person and God, and the burdened person cannot see God clearly at all. That's why we have to avoid any kind of temptation that will destroy us. We gain the strength to overcome this from prayer, because if we are close to God we spread joy and love to everybody around us.

If evil takes possession of someone, that person, in turn, may spread evil to everybody around him. If we are in contact with such people we must try and help them and show them that God cares for them. Pray hard to help bring prayer back to them so that they may once more see God in themselves and then see Him in others. It is this which will help the person who is bad because everybody--it doesn't matter who--has been created by the same loving hand. Christ's love is always stronger than the evil in the world, so we need to love and to be loved: it's as simple as that. This shouldn't be such a struggle to achieve.

-Mother Teresa