Understanding Mother Teresa

I just finished reading the biography of Mother Teresa. The idea was to understand the stuff these great people are made of and get an insight into the lives they have lived. What is it that inspired them to sacrifice all the pleasures of life so easily and commit their entire lives to achieve a higher goal? They never had a trace of doubt in their heart for the path they had chosen for they never had the time to think about it , they were so busy fulfilling that one purpose in life god had sent them for. This blog is not about the life history of Mother Teresa as facts can be found on Google but ideas that struck me and I took away with me after reading the book.

Mother Teresa was a no different woman. Perhaps she was more ordinary than most ordinary people around us. She was a very simple, gentle girl full of fun. What made her different was her unshakable faith in god. She was so close to God in her body and heart that she could listen to the will of god for her. It was with the power of her prayers that she had been able to establish that connection with her higher self. Her talks were about simple things love, care and sharing. She told the importance of little drops in the end that make the ocean. She never wasted a single minute of her life as she believed that there was a lot of work to be done in her lifetime and the poor and needy were waiting for her. Only with such a strong faith and conviction, she was able to leave the comforts of Loreto convent as a teacher to come to roads in a single cotton sari without any money to help the extremely poor and desolate.

Once someone asked her, "how could she clean the stinking wound of a leprosy patient?" And she replied-“We could not do it for the love of all the money in the world, but we do it for the love of him”. Because she saw a dying and suffering Christ in the face of all the sick and poor, that she was able to serve them with all the love in her heart. The young sisters of missionaries of charity were asked once -“Didn't they once wished to have the lives of the young girls around on the road wearing fashionable clothes and enjoying the pleasures of life”. One of them just laughed and said that they had many opportunities to choose that life but they had evolved themselves so much spiritually that it just didn't matter to them. This made me reflect that for sure there is a higher state of contentment and bliss in which these young girls were living but perhaps it is beyond the imagination and understanding of a normal person like you and me

Another thing that struck me was that she never waited for anything to happen once she was sure of the path she wanted to take in her life. She believed in the providence of god and that he would help her in her journey. Reading this i remembered someone once said to me “if what one is doing is good and is for service to people, don’t worry about money, it will eventually follow". That’s what happened with Mother Teresa. Except for the initial stages of her struggle, she never fell short of donations or volunteers. All sorts of help poured in from all over the world to become a part of the good work that she was doing which she never even felt a need to publicize.

Mother Teresa was also different for she never looked for any public adulation for the work she did. She was extremely uncomfortable when she was called upon to receive awards and give public speeches. She thought that it took away her energy which could have been used it to serve one more patient. Once, she was asked what would she do with one of the award that she had recently received and she replied she would sell it and use the money to buy medicines and food for the people. So true, dedicated and pure was the life that she led.

It was truly inspiring and humbling to read the life story of a soul as great as her. If we could only live one percent of the live she lived, the world would be a much better place to live in. At the end I would just like to end with a quote from her “God has called upon all of us not to be successful but to be faithful”.

Keep learning, keep living.