Nobody understood poverty any more than Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Nobody did any more to help. Many people are vaguely aware of her ministry. [We summarize it here if you would like to know more.] Unfortunately, few know what she wrote. This is sad because, although not particularly voluminous, they are profound. We have listed of some of her better known teachings directly below. We encourage you to savor them one at a time. Note how every one makes a great sermon topic. You may want to have a box of tissues handy. HER MINISTRY I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an order. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God. I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus. The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it. POVERTY One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted. We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. GOOD WORKS Good works are links that form a chain of love. Jesus came not to give the peace of the world which is only that we don't bother each other. He came to give the peace of heart which comes from loving – from doing good to others. We are all pencils in the hand of God. It is a kingly act to assist the fallen. In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me. HER CALL TO ACTION Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough. If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness. A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her. I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Ask yourself “How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?” Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery. There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ: Jesus is my God; Jesus is my Spouse; Jesus is my Life; Jesus is my only Love; Jesus is my All in All; Jesus is my Everything. OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE POOR Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well. We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do. If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Each one of them is Jesus in disguise. FAITHFULNESS I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing. We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish sometimes that He didn't trust me quite so much. PEACE AND HAPPINESS Peace begins with a smile. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. A sacrifice to be real must cost; must hurt; must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace. JOY AND KINDNESS Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. LOVE AND LOVING Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. Intense love does not measure, it just gives. I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters. Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done. I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I don't know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will NOT ask, How many good things have you done in your life? Rather he will ask, “How much LOVE did you put into what you did?” HOW TO LOVE It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home. There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives – the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. STEWARDSHIP AND GOD’S PROVISION Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification or a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here; no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy. When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. When once a chairman of a multinational company came to see me, to offer me a property in Bombay, he first asked: “Mother, how do you manage your budget?" I asked him who had sent him here. He replied: “I felt an urge inside me.” I said, “Other people like you come to see me and say the same. It was clear God sent you, Mr. A, as He sends Mr. X, Mrs. Y, Miss Z, and they provide the material means we need for our work. The grace of God is what moved you. You are my budget. God sees to our needs, as Jesus promised. I accepted the property he gave and named it Asha Dan (Gift of Hope).” You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. LISTENING TO GOD We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls. Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. FORGIVENESS If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive. I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: “My son did this to me.” I begged her, “You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him.” It took me a long time to make her say, “I forgive my son.” Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand. ABORTION It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. HER PRAYERS Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience. Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread. And by our understanding love, give them peace and joy. WHERE TO GO FROM HERE We have prepared a copy of Mother Teresa’s quotes in pdf format. You can download that document and then print out as many copies as you desire by clicking here. We recommend that you examine the “Are You Really Saved” section of our website here. Scroll down to Part 3 of the test and ask yourself if it appears Mother Teresa had a genuine saving faith as described in the Bible. Now, start fighting poverty by spreading the Love of Christ throughout your own home. Today! Right now! Begin with your spouse; your children; your grandchildren; your parents; your siblings. Do it exactly the way Mother Teresa said – the same way the Bible teaches. Next, if you live in our community, you are invited to help us fight poverty in this area. You can get started by contacting us here. If you live somewhere else, you can fight poverty by joining a Bible-believing New Testament church. You can find a listing of some of those churches in your community by clicking here. Finally, no matter where you live, you can fight poverty by helping through our Missions Ministry. You can find out more by clicking here.