There are soul links between people for which prayer is the link itself. Read this remarkable story of a soul link between every sister in Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity and a disabled and suffering person, which began with Mother Teresa and Jacqueline de Decker, a Belgian nurse, and ultimately involved thousands of people:

For two years, prior to meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, de Decker had lived alone and worked among the poor in Madras, trying to relieve suffering. During the same two years, Teresa had sought permission to found a new order that would serve the poorest of the poor. The two women met and de Decker joined Teresa’s project but soon became severely ill with a spinal problem and had to return to Belgium. Distraught, she wrote to Mother Teresa saying farewell.

Here is what happened next, resulting from Mother Teresa’s response to her letter, quoting from Beyond Love, by Dominque Lapierre:

“In the spaces of a few lines, Mother Teresa outlined for her a unique project: the creation of an association that would weave across land and ocean, the links of a mystical communion between those who suffer in their bodies and need to be active, and those who are active and need the prayers of others in order to be so. ‘Today I am going to propose something to you that will fill you with joy,’ Teresa wrote to her Belgian friend. ‘Will you become my twin Sister and a true Missionary of Charity, being in body in Belgium but in soul in India? By becoming spiritually linked to our efforts, through the offering of your suffering and your prayers you will share in our work in the slums.’”

Thus was born the Link for the Sick and Suffering Coworkers of Mother Theresa. The first links were formed between twenty-seven severely handicapped and incurably sick people and the first twenty-seven sisters who had gone with Mother Teresa to serve the poorest of the poor in the Calcutta slums. Thirty-five years later, the Link involved thousands of people.