Lectio et Oratio

What did Mother especially admire in others? Understanding love. Mother Teresa never separated truth and love. Love normally depends on knowledge. We cannot love what we do not know. But once we know someone, we can grow in our understanding of the person. We can understand better what motivates the person, for example. We can better understand how to help someone. Mother loved the phrase, underst...

Did Mother Teresa think we need human support? Yes. She especially thought we needed the help of prayers from others. She begged for prayers. She prayed for others. But also she knew that we needed encouragement. She understood that Christ is our great support, but Christ acts through our fellow members of the Mystical Body.

What comparison did Mother use for understanding our sufferings?  A kiss. She said that the sufferings that Christ allows are signs of his love. They are like kisses from him that show us how much he cares for us.

How did Mother handle the increasing number of crowds that wanted to see her? With prayer. She felt the crowds in places like Philadelphia were a huge cross. She did not enjoy the publicity, the police, the speeches. But she begged God to give her the grace to accept everything with a smile. She even compared these smiles at Jesus to the difficulties spouses have in dealing with the trials of thei...

To what did Mother like to compare herself in relation to Christ?  An oil lamp. He is the light of the world. She never wanted to think of herself as an independent light. Her light was from Him. But she did think that she would be able by her fidelity to keep oil in the lamp so that Christ could shine through her.

What did her life in the 1970s look like? Incredibly peaceful and serene. In the 1960s she had especially made her peace with her darkness and isolation. But in the 1970s her forgetfulness of self, her complete focus on the Lord grew and grew. Peace of soul is the result of being one with God. 

Where did Mother Theresa keep all her awards and special honours? In a cardboard box. She won the noble prize. She was honoured by so many countries. But the awards did not matter to her except insofar as they helped her serve the poor.

How did Mother react when she met a new person? It depends. Mother lived in the presence of God. She could assess a situation very quickly. She could form a judgment of a person’s good qualities with little time spent. With the help of the Holy Spirit, she tried to treat each person as God wanted her to do so.

What was her prayer like? Uncompromising. Full of intercession. Mother Teresa was incredibly faithful to her times of prayer, especially her holy hour. She could be flexible with the time and place. But she knew He wanted her there. And so she answered His call. Her prayer was sometimes simply the bringing before Him of the faces she had met on the streets.  

How did Mother Teresa described the year 1967? She said it was a “hard and sad time of fight for the faith.” Even though the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) was meant to enliven the faith of the whole Church and urge the Church on in her missionary work, the years after the Council, like the years after many Councils, were times of great controversy. Mother saw these years as one of purification....

In 1969, what did Mother feel? As confusion in the Church seemed to grow, Mother’s zeal burned brighter. Zeal is an effect of divine love. Love becomes zeal when it sees obstacles in its way. Zeal wants to remove obstacles to the growth of divine love. And Mother wanted to light the light of divine love in every human heart.

Can Christ’s thirst be satiated? Yes. He thirsts for human persons to love Him. Christ is the head of the Church. He is our God and Lord. He thirsts for us to be happy. Our happiness is found only in Him. And Mother Teresa wanted to please Christ by bringing others into friendship with Him. But Christ also thirsts for love in his  body, the Church. Christ is present in his members, the members of...

Did Mother have doubts? She never doubted God. She never doubted his goodness. But why then was she in such darkness? She doubted her own response to His goodness. She had difficultly knowing whether she loved Him. She was feeling unloved by Him. But her own state of soul is not revealed to us in the Revelation of Christ. Her own spiritual state was a matter of conjecture from the fruits she exper...

What kind of advice did Mother Teresa sometimes ask for? What books to read. The Missionaries of Charity are required to do spiritual reading each day. They had many books in their library. But Mother Teresa often found it hard to know what to read. And so she asked advice. Spiritual reading is important!

Why did Mother Teresa not want people to be sad for her? God was doing something great. As her spiritual fathers grasped her interior suffering, they sometimes expressed sorrow for her state. Mother Teresa was very firm. Do not be sad for me, she insisted.

Where was the first house opened outside India? Venezuela. Mother Teresa now was friends with the Papal nuncio, the official representative of the Holy Father. She wrote him about the events in Venezuela. She told him of two men they found eaten up with worms. As they nursed the men back to health, one man asked for a cigarette. Mother reached in her bag and produced two packs of the finest cigare...

How did the Lord treat Mother Teresa when the Society was officially approved by the Pope? With profound interior pain. The Lord seemed to Mother Teresa to pour out his mercy on her Society while withdrawing from her his holy hand of sweetness. There seemed to be some proportion between his mercies to the sisters and Mother’s own sense of being unloved. As she shared in Christ’s thirst on the Cros...

How did Mother react when the Vatican asked for the historical origins of the Society and how did react to Sisters leaving the Society? With humility. When the Missionaries of Charity applied for pontifical status as a worldwide religious order directly under the Pope, Mother Teresa did not put her own call forward in detail. She did not want to be the centre of consideration. She always wanted th...

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How did Mother Teresa live Lent? She wanted to give Christ a free hand. She wanted to share in his pains so that she could enter more fully into his love. At the same time, Mother Teresa taught her sisters during Lent. She passed onto to others the fruit of her own prayer and suffering. How did all this suffering and teaching bear fruit? In 1963, Mother Teresa looked to a new moment in the life of...