Teresa of Calcutta

Mother Teresa (born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu(August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997), was a Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work. she donated her $192,000 prize to the poor of India, she was asked “what we can do promote world peace?” Her response: “go home and love your family”.For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying in Kolkata (Calcutta), India.  Considered one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016

As the Missionaries of Charity grew under Mother Teresa's leadership, they expanded their ministry to other countries. By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge.

Quotes

 “In reality, there is only one true prayer, only one substantial prayer:  Christ himself.  There is only one voice which rises above the face of the earth, the voice of Christ.  Prayer is oneness with Christ.”
-Mother Teresa

“Christ prays in me, Christ works in me, Christ thinks in me, Christ looks through my eyes, Christ speaks through my words, Christ works with my hands, Christ walks with my feet, Christ loves with my heart.  As St Paul’s prayer was:  “I belong to Christ and nothing will separate me from the love of Christ.”  It was that oneness, oneness with God in the Holy Spirit.”
-Mother Teresa

Prayer is nothing but that complete surrender, complete oneness with Christ.  And this is what makes us contemplative in the heart of the world; for we are twenty-four hours then in His presence: in the hungry, in the naked, in the homeless, in the unwanted, unloved, uncared for.  For Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”
-Mother Teresa

Our Father, here I am, at your disposal, your child, to use me to continue your loving the world, by giving Jesus to me and through me, to each other that we allow Jesus to love in us and through us with the love with which His Father loves him.
-Mother Teresa

“Behold , I have graven you upon the palm of my hand”, that is what Jesus came on earth to do: to proclaim, to give us the Good News that God loves us, that we are precious to Him.
-Mother Teresa

We need prayer to understand God’s love for us.  If we really mean to pray and want to pray we must be ready to do it now.  These are only the first steps towards prayer but if we never make the first step with determination, we will not reach the last one: the presence of God
-Mother Teresa

Living intensely each present day means letting Christ dwell within you.  His words are so clear:  “Today I would like to enter your home.”
-Mother Teresa

Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Risen Christ.
-Mother Teresa

Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you must go and sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody… it is never too small, for this is our love of Christ in action
-Mother Teresa

Lord Jesus, make us realize that it is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully; for it is only by dying with you that we can rise with you.
-Mother Teresa

My secret is quite simple:  I pray!
-Mother Teresa

We complicate prayer as we complicate many things.  It is to love Jesus with undivided love.  And that undivided love is put into action when we do as Jesus said, “love as I have loved you”
-Mother Teresa

I have come to you, Jesus, to take your touch before I begin my day.  Let your eyes rest upon my eyes for a while let me take to my work the assurance of your friendship.  Fill my mind to last through the desert of noise.  Let your blessed sunshine fill the peaks of my thoughts.  And give me strength for those who need me.
-Mother Teresa

The beginning of prayer is silence.  If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.  And to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God we need a clean heart; for a clean heart can see God, can hear God, can listen to God; and then only from the fullness of our heart can we speak to God.  But we cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made that connection with God in the silence of our heart.
-Mother Teresa

Then we have the silence of the eyes which will always help us to see God.  Our eyes are like two windows through which Christ or the world comes to our hearts.  Often we need great courage to keep them closed.  How often we say, “I wish I had not seen this thing”, and yet we take so little trouble to overcome the desire to see everything.
-Mother Teresa

Silence gives us a new outlook on everything.  We need silence to be able to touch souls.  The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us.
-Mother Teresa

When a poor person dies I want then to die in the arms of somebody who loves them.  I want them to be able to look for the last time into the eyes of somebody who cares for them
-Mother Teresa

Faith is a gift of God.  Without it there would be no life.  And our work, to be fruitful, and to be all for God, and to be beautiful, has to be built of faith.  Faith in Christ who has said, “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless, and you ministered to me!” On these words of His all our work is based.
-Mother Teresa

Faith is lacking because there is so much selfishness and so much gain only for self.  But faith, to be true has to be giving love.  Love and faith go together.  They complete each other.
-Mother Teresa

People are hungry for something more beautiful, for something greater than people round about can give.  There is a great hunger for God in the world today.  Everywhere there is much suffering, but there is also great hunger for God and love for each other.
-Mother Teresa

Suffering in itself is nothing, but suffering shared with Christ’s passion is a wonderful gift.  Man’s most beautiful gift is that he can share in the passion of Christ.  Yes a gift and a sign of his love; because this is how His Father proved that He loved the world.   By giving His Son to die for us.
-Mother Teresa

Without our suffering our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but not the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption.  Jesus wanted to help by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony, our death.  Only by being one with us has He redeemed us.
-Mother Teresa

If you can learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christ-like, for his heart was meek, and he always thought of others.  Thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity.  Our vocation to be beautiful must be full of thoughts for others.
-Mother Teresa

A Christian is the dwelling place of the living God.  He created me, he chose me, He came to dwell in me, because he wanted me.  Now that you have known how much God is in love with you it is but natural that you spend the rest of your life radiating that love.
-Mother Teresa

When Christ said, “I was hungry and you fed me,” he didn’t mean only the hunger for bread; he meant the hunger to be loved.  Jesus himself experienced this loneliness.  He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept hurting him.  The same hunger, loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and be loved and wanted by.  Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness, that’s the hardest part, that’s real hunger.
-Mother Teresa

We are asked to do the same; all for the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual desolation, must be redeemed.  And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God.
-Mother Teresa

If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not because God didn’t care for them, but because you and I didn’t give, were not instruments of love in the hands of God, to give them the bread, to give them the clothing, because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise-in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter.  God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless, hunger not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone, nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness for that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only for shelter but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.
-Mother Teresa

Be kind and merciful, let no one ever come to you without ever leaving better and happier.  Be the living expression of God’s kindness.  Let this be expressed in your face, eyes, smile, warm greetings.  Give not only your care but your hearts.
-Mother Teresa

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point.  What to do?  Take a broom and clean someone’s house, that says enough.
-Mother Teresa

All of us our but his instruments who do our part and pass by.
-Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money; money is not enough, for money one can get.  The poor need our hands to serve them, they need our hearts to love them.  The religion of Christ is love, the spreading of love.
-Mother Teresa

People everywhere are the same; they are all people to be loved.  They are all hungry for love.
-Mother Teresa

I remember I picked up a person from the street who was nearly eaten up with maggots, and he said, I have lived like an animal, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.
-Mother Teresa

God is purity himself, nothing impure can come before him, but I don’t think God can hate.  Because God is love and He loves us in spite of our misery and sinfulness.  He is our loving father and so we only have to turn to him. God cannot hate, he loves because he is love, but impurity is an obstacle to seeing God.  This doesn’t mean the sin of impurity, but any attachment, anything that takes us away from God, anything that makes us less Christ-like, any hatred, any uncharitableness is also impurity.  If we are full of sin, God cannot fill us, because even God cannot fill what is full.  That’s why we need forgiveness to become empty; therefore God fills us with himself
-Mother Teresa

Keep giving Jesus to whomever is before you, not by words but by your example.  By your being in love with Jesus, by radiating his holiness and spreading his fragrance of love everywhere you go.  Just keep the joy of Jesus as your strength!
-Mother Teresa

I do not agree with the big way of doing things.  To us what matters is the individual.  To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him, if we wait for the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person.  I believe in person to person; every person is Christ to me, and since there is only one Jesus that person is the one person in the world at that moment.
-Mother Teresa

Thou shall love the Lord with thy whole heart, soul, and mind.  This is the commandment of the Great God, and he cannot command the impossible.  Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand.  Anyone may gather it and no limit is set.  Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice by an intense inner life.  There is no limit because God is love, love is God, God’s love is infinite.  But part is to love and to give until it hurts.  That’s why it is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the action.
-Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness.  God is the friend of silence.  See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grow in silence.  Is not our mission to give God to those we walk with?  Not a dead God, but a living, loving God.  The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life.  We need silence to be able to touch souls.  The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us.  Words that don’t give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
-Mother Teresa

Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and whilst nursing them, minister unto you.  Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguises of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you.  And say, Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.
-Mother Teresa

Lord, help us to see in your crucifixion and resurrection an example of how to endure and seemingly to die in the agony and conflict of daily life, so that we may live more fully and creatively.  You accepted patiently and humbly the rebuffs of human life, as well as the torture of the cross.  Help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunity to grow as people and become more like you-make us realize that it is only by frequent deaths of ourselves, and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully, only by dying with you that we can rise with you.
-Mother Teresa

We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it our power to be in heaven with him right now-to be happy with him at this very moment.  But this means being:  Loving as he loves, helping as he helps, giving as he gives, serving as he serves, rescuing as he rescues, being with him all 24 hours of the day, touching him in his distressing disguise.
-Mother Teresa

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow men 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.
-Mother Teresa

“It is easy to love those who are far away. It isn't always easy to love those who are right next to us. It is easier to offer food to the hungry than to answer the lonely suffering of someone who lacks love right in one’s own family…The world today is upside down because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life. We have no time for each other. Everybody is in such a terrible rush, and so anxious…and in the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.”
-Mother Teresa

"My prayer for you is that you may grow in the likeness of Christ, being real carriers of God's love and that you really bring his presence, first, into your own family, then, to the next door neighbor, the street you we live in, the town we live in, the country we live, then only, in the whole world, that living example of God's presence."
-Mother Teresa

“I always begin prayer with silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.  God is the friend of silence—we need to listen to God because it’s not what w say but what He says to and through us that matters.  Prayer feeds the soul—as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul—and it brings you closer to God.  It also gives you a clean and pure heart, a clean heart can see God, can speak to God , and can see the love of God in others.”
-Mother Teresa

“you must give what will cost you something.”
-Mother Teresa

People ask me what advice I have for a married couple struggling in their relationship. I always answer, “Pray and forgive”; and to young people who come from violent homes, “Pray and forgive”; and to the single mother with no family support, “Pray and forgive.” You can say, “My Lord, I love you. My God, I am sorry. My God, I believe in you. My God, I trust you. Help us to love one another as you love us.”
-Mother Teresa

God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger, not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just from a shelter made of stone, but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.
-Mother Teresa

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
-Mother Teresa

“If we have no peace it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
-Mother Teresa

The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy.…We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God. All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God’s love. We meet that hunger by spreading joy. Joy is one of the best safeguards against temptation.
-Mother Teresa

"We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us." 
-Mother Teresa

“Though we are involved in social work, our goal is to be contemplatives at the heart of the world. We are with Jesus twenty-four hours a day. We do everything for Jesus. We do it all unto Jesus.”
-Mother Teresa

In order for us to be able to love, we need to have faith, because faith is love in action and love in action is service. In order for us to be able to love, we have to see and touch. Faith in action through prayer, faith in action through service: each is the same thing, the same love, the same compassion.
-Mother Teresa  Source:  No Greater Love

Look at the cross and you will know what one soul means to Jesus. The Cross will be for us as it was for Christ: proof of the greatest love. 
-Mother Teresa

If you are searching for God and do not know where to begin, learn to pray. Take the trouble to pray every day. You can pray anytime, anywhere. You can pray at work – work doesn’t have to stop prayer and prayer doesn’t have to stop work. Tell him everything; talk to him. He is our father; he is father to us all, whatever religion we are. We are all created by God, we are his children. We have to put our trust in him and love him, believe in him, and work for him. If we pray, we will get all the answers we need.
-Mother Teresa Source:  A Simple Path

Try to feel the need for prayer often during the day, and take the trouble to pray. Prayer makes the heart large enough until it can contain God’s gift of himself. Ask and seek, and your heart will grow big enough to receive him, and keep him as your own.
-Mother Teresa

I don’t think we could have ever loved God if Jesus had not become one of us. So that we might be able to love God, he became one of us in all things, except sin. If we have been created in the image of God, then we have been created to love, because God is love. In his passion Jesus taught us how to forgive out of love, how to forget out of humility. Find Jesus, and you will find peace.
-Mother Teresa     Source: No Greater Love

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.
-Mother Teresa

The password of the early Christians was joy, so let us still serve the Lord with joy. Joy is love, joy is prayer, joy is strength. God loves a person who gives joyfully, and if you give joyfully you always give more. A joyful heart is the result of a heart burning with love. Works of love are always works of joy. We don’t need to look for happiness: if we have love for others we’ll be given it. It is the gift of God.
-Mother Teresa

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 created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.
-Mother Teresa

To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and of loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something beautiful for God. Purity is the fruit of prayer. If families pray together they will remain in unity and purity, and love each other as God loves each one of them. A pure heart is the carrier of God’s love, and where there is love, there is unity, joy, and peace.
-Mother Teresa

“Christ says: I know you through and through – I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you – even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity my Father gave you by creating you in his own image.”
-Mother Teresa

An empty heart God fills. Even Almighty God will not fill a heart that is full – full of pride, bitterness, jealousy – we must give these things up. As long as we are holding these things, God cannot fill it. Silence of the heart, not only of the mouth – that too is neccessary – but more, that silence of the mind, silence of the eyes, silence of the touch. Then you can hear him everywhere: in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, the animals – that silence which is wonder and praise. Why? Because God is everywhere and you can see and hear him. 
~Mother Teresa

“The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy.…We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God. All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God’s love. We meet that hunger by spreading joy. Joy is one of the best safeguards against temptation.”
Mother Teresa  ‘No greater Love’

“When Jesus came into the world, he loved it so much that he gave his life for it. He wanted to satisfy our hunger for God. And what did he do? He made himself the Bread of Life. He became small, fragile, and defenseless for us. Bits of bread can be so small that even a baby can chew them, even a dying person can eat them. He became the Bread of Life to satisfy our hunger for God, our hunger for love.”
Mother Teresa  Source: No Greater Love

“Your work on behalf of God’s kingdom will be better carried out if you know how he wants you to carry it out, but you will have no way of knowing that, other than by obedience to his word. Submit to it, just like ivy. Ivy cannot live if it does not hold fast to something; you will not grow or live in holiness unless you hold fast to obedience.”
-Mother Teresa  Source: Seeking Peace

“God cannot fill what is full. He can fill only emptiness – deep poverty – and your “yes” [to Jesus] is the beginning of being or becoming empty. It is not how much we really “have” to give – but how empty we are – so that we can receive fully in our life and let him live his life in us. In you today – he wants to relive his complete submission to his father – allow him to do so. Take away your eyes from yourself and rejoice that you have nothing.”
-Mother Teresa  Source: Come Be My Light

“If you are searching for God and do not know where to begin, learn to pray. Take the trouble to pray every day. You can pray anytime, anywhere. You can pray at work – work doesn’t have to stop prayer and prayer doesn’t have to stop work. Tell him everything; talk to him. He is our father; he is father to us all, whatever religion we are. We are all created by God, we are his children. We have to put our trust in him and love him, believe in him, and work for him. If we pray, we will get all the answers we need.”
-Mother Teresa  Source: A Simple Path

“God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger, not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just from a shelter made of stone, but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.”
-Mother Teresa  Source: Mother Teresa: Essential Writings

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.” 
-Mother Teresa 

Your work on behalf of God’s kingdom will be better carried out if you know how he wants you to carry it out, but you will have no way of knowing that, other than by obedience to his word. Submit to it, just like ivy. Ivy cannot live if it does not hold fast to something; you will not grow or live in holiness unless you hold fast to obedience.
-Mother Teresa  Source:  Seeking Peace

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor“
-Mother Teresa

“So it starts with your family and expands outward, to your neighbors, your workplace and on to your community. Mother Teresa believed not in grand gestures, but in the power of these small acts of compassion. She is quoted as saying “we can do no great things—only small things with great love.”
-Mother Teresa

“It is easy to love the people far away.  It is not always easy to love those close to us.  Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start.”  “The way you help heal the world is that you start with your own family.”
-Mother Teresa

“Dying is not the end, it is just the beginning. Death is a continuation of life. This is the meaning of eternal life; it is where our soul goes to God, to be in the presence of God, to see God, to speak to God, to continue loving him with greater love. We only surrender our body in death – our heart and our soul live forever. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we are ready, and prepared, to die with a clean heart.”
-Mother Teresa  Source: A Simple Path

“The password of the early Christians was joy, so let us still serve the Lord with joy. Joy is love, joy is prayer, joy is strength. God loves a person who gives joyfully, and if you give joyfully you always give more. A joyful heart is the result of a heart burning with love. Works of love are always works of joy. We don’t need to look for happiness: if we have love for others we’ll be given it. It is the gift of God.”
-Mother Teresa   Source:  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 created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.”
-Mother Teresa  Source:  A Simple Path

“To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and of loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something beautiful for God. Purity is the fruit of prayer. If families pray together they will remain in unity and purity, and love each other as God loves each one of them. A pure heart is the carrier of God’s love, and where there is love, there is unity, joy, and peace.”
-Mother Teresa

“Faith in action is love. And love in action is service.”
-Mother Teresa
 
“For love to be real, it must cost, it must hurt, it must empty us of self.”
-Mother Teresa
 
“The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.”
-Mother Teresa
 
“To give until it hurts. This is the true meaning of love.”
-Mother Teresa 
 
“Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls.”
-Mother Teresa
 
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.”
-Mother Teresa
 
“If there has been resentment in our hearts or if we have not accepted humiliation, we will not learn humility.” 
-Mother Teresa
 
“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.” 
-Mother Teresa

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.”
-Teresa of Calcutta  Source:  A Life for God

“Christ says: I know you through and through – I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you – even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity my Father gave you by creating you in his own image.”
-Teresa of Calcutta 

“It is not how much we are doing but how much love, how much honesty, how much faith is put into doing it. It makes no difference what we are doing. What you are doing, I cannot do, and what I am doing, you cannot do. Only sometimes we forget and we spend more time looking at somebody else and wishing we were doing something else. We waste our time thinking of tomorrow, and today we let the day pass, and yesterday is gone.”
-Teresa of Calcutta  Source:  Mother Teresa, Her People, Her Work

“An empty heart God fills. Even Almighty God will not fill a heart that is full – full of pride, bitterness, jealousy – we must give these things up. As long as we are holding these things, God cannot fill it. Silence of the heart, not only of the mouth – that too is neccessary – but more, that silence of the mind, silence of the eyes, silence of the touch. Then you can hear him everywhere: in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, the animals – that silence which is wonder and praise. Why? Because God is everywhere and you can see and hear him.”
-Teresa of Calcutta  Source:  Where there is Love, there is God

“I have experienced many human weaknesses, many human frailties, and I still experience them. But we need to use them. We need to work for Christ with a humble heart, with the humility of Christ. He comes and uses us to be his love and compassion in the world in spite of our weaknesses and frailties.”
-Mother Teresa  Source:  No Greater Love

I feel that we too often focus only on the negative aspect of life – on what is bad. If we were more willing to see the good and the beautiful things that surround us, we would be able to transform our families. From there, we would change our next-door neighbors and then others who live in our neighborhood or city. We would be able to bring peace and love to our world, which hungers so much for these things.
-Teresa of Calcutta   Source:  No Greater Love

Christ says: I know you through and through – I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you – even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity my Father gave you by creating you in his own image.
-Teresa of Calcutta

“God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger, not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just from a shelter made of stone, but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.”
-Teresa of Calcutta  Source:  Essential Writings

Dying is not the end, it is just the beginning. Death is a continuation of life. This is the meaning of eternal life; it is where our soul goes to God, to be in the presence of God, to see God, to speak to God, to continue loving him with greater love. We only surrender our body in death – our heart and our soul live forever. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we are ready, and prepared, to die with a clean heart.
-Teresa of Calcutta   Source:  A Simple Path

Behold , I have graven you upon the palm of my hand, that is what Jesus came on earth to do: to proclaim, to give us the Good News that God loves us, that we are precious to Him.
-Teresa of Calcutta

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.
-Teresa of Calcutta

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.
-Teresa of Calcutta

“To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and of loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength we need to keep purity as something beautiful for God. Purity is the fruit of prayer. If families pray together they will remain in unity and purity, and love each other as God loves each one of them. A pure heart is the carrier of God’s love, and where there is love, there is unity, joy, and peace.”
-Teresa of Calcutta



Prayers:

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow man 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 peace and joy.  Lord make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that where there is error, I may bring truth, where there is doubt-faith, where there is despair-hope; where there are shadows-light; where there is sadness-joy.  Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; to understand than to be understood, to love than be loved, for it is by forgetting self that one finds it; by dying that one awakens to eternal life—Amen
-Prayer Attributed to Mother Teresa and St Francis of Assisi