A Dialogue with Mother Teresa’s No Greater Love

 

 Mother Teresa is a well known woman throughout the world by Christians and non-Christians for her faith and selfless work among the poor in Calcutta, India and throughout the world. Mother Teresa was a nun among the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto. After a period of time she felt that God had called her to serve the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. Mother Teresa started the order, the Missionaries of Charity. This led to young women to turn their lives over to God and to serve among the poor. Throughout Mother Teresa’s life she served among the poor in the streets of Calcutta. No Greater Love is a testament to the experiences she had while serving among the poor and her inspirational teachings and faith in God. No Greater Love covers areas of prayer, love, giving, suffering and death, work and service, being holy, and poverty and poor. Mother Teresa has been an inspiration to me since I started community college. I had heard of Mother Teresa before I started community college but did not know much about her or her teachings. After reading about her works and teachings, this is when I felt my spirituality start to deepen and take shape. This is what led me to read No Greater Love during my first semester at Western Theological Seminary. I feel that I am able to connect with Mother Teresa’s teachings and work. This book has helped me grow spiritually and understand some of the things that I have felt or learned throughout my first semester of seminary and teaching church. Not only did I grow spiritually, but I felt after a semester of mixed emotions that this really helped me confirm my call to ministry.

The first chapter in No Greater Love is inspirational words from Mother Teresa on prayer. Mother Teresa writes, “It is only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can cultivate the gift of prayer.”¹ Mental prayer is when we open our hearts and mind to hear God speak to us. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in what we feel we need to say or tell to God that we forget to listen to Him. Prayer is a time when we can go before God and open ourselves to listen to Him. I believe that we can pray prayers of thanksgiving, confession, and need to Him also. But mental prayer allows us to quiet ourselves and let “God pour himself into us.”

Most Christians have heard the prayer of the people during a worship service. Sometimes it is referred to as the long prayer…the longest prayer usually in the service. I remember as a child wondering why the minister had to say such a long and drawn out prayer, could he not keep it simple and short? I remember almost falling a sleep sometimes in those prayers. I am not saying that praying long prayers is wrong, but sometimes I believe that we can get caught up in the words and lose the essence of prayer. Mother Teresa states, “Be more childlike, more humble, more grateful in prayer…let’s not pray long drawn out prayers, but let’s pray short ones full of love.” ² A few times this semester at my teaching church, I was asked to say the prayer for the people. I thought to myself how on earth will I be able to say such a long prayer in front of people especially when I have an anxiety problem with praying in front of large groups of people? I was anxious about saying the right things and it being long enough. In truth, I found that I was worried over nothing. I found resources that had prayers for the people that I used and were not always long. The prayers that I picked I felt that I could pray with love from my heart to God with the people of the congregation. As I read the prayer aloud, I felt that I read it with reverence and confidence. Through these prayers I felt that I lifted up prayers to God with my heart and soul. In these prayers, I would allow a time for silence between pieces of the prayer. According to Mother Teresa, we should “Listen in silence because if your heart is full of other things you cannot hear the voice of God. But when you have listened to the voice of God in the stillness of your heart, then your heart is filled with God.”³ Through silence we can really let our hearts and minds open to what God has to say to us. This silence allows God to fill us and enter into a relationship with us. This has helped me to remember that through prayer, I am united with God. Sometimes I get caught up in the business of school, family, friends, and teaching church that I forget to be silent in prayer with God, so that I may unite and strengthen my relationship with God. These words of Mother Teresa have helped me and reminded me of what prayer is about.

In another section of No Greater Love, is on forgiveness. Mother Teresa in this section speaks of the saints and how they looked upon themselves with horror because they saw the difference between God and themselves. Sometimes we hurt because we do not know ourselves and fix our eyes upon God which means we do not have real knowledge of God. Mother Teresa states, “Knowledge of ourselves will help us to rise up whereas sin and weakness will lead to despondency. Deep confidence and trust will come through self-knowledge. Then you will turn to Jesus to support you in your weakness, whereas if you think you are strong, you will not need our Lord.”⁴ My first semester at seminary has been very revealing and eye opening for me personally. Each student is to partake in a psychological evaluation. I went into this evaluation believing that I was pretty familiar with myself and things that were going on in my life and emotions. When I went to speak with the psychiatrist, I was shocked as to hear what he was telling me about myself according to results from the test I took. The results really hurt me because I did not believe some of these things to be a problem in my life. I took these results to mean that I am broken and my pieces need to be put back together. I had feelings of depression after finding out the results of this test. I wondered could I be pieced back together enough to do ministry to others? I was then comforted by words that Mother Teresa spoke, “He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness. Believe in Him, trust in Him with a blind and absolute confidence because He is Jesus.”⁵ Well after reading these words of Mother Teresa’s, I believed that this was a good thing. I have learned things about myself, and this will help me to overcome some of these weaknesses. Through this self-knowledge, I can strengthen my weaknesses and heal. I know that I am personally not strong enough to do this. I need to look to family and friends for support. Most importantly, I must look to Jesus Christ to embrace me with his shawl of love, to support me through this time of brokenness, to guide me, and to help me overcome these weaknesses.

By reading No Greater Love, I feel that this has helped me to understand my calling more clearly and helped me to confirm that my calling was truly from God. This first semester at seminary is a time to find who you are and to help you to define your calling. At first, I knew I was called to seminary by God but was not sure why and how God would use me. I may not be concrete clear on all of this at this point, but I do believe that throughout the semester this has been revealed to me by God in different ways. At times after speaking with people and going through some personal things, I thought may be God has not called me. Through certain parts of my ministry at my teaching church, long talks with my advisor at the seminary, and talks with my friends, I found that I have certain gifts given to me by God to do ministry in ways that others may not. During this semester, I found that I do not feel called at this point to do ministry within a church setting. This made me believe that I was not called to ministry by God. Mother Teresa’s words changed this. I may be called to do ministry in a different setting than a church setting. Mother Teresa states, “We all have the duty to serve God where we feel called. I feel called to help individuals, to love each human being. I never think in terms of crowds in general but in terms of persons. Were I to think about crowds, I would never begin anything. It is the person that matters. I believe in person-to-person encounters.”⁶ Throughout the semester I have felt this sense of calling to help others and do counseling or chaplaincy. I have had a few people tell me that may be I should look into social work instead of ministry. I admire those who do the work and service of social work, but I believe that God has called me to serve and do ministry. I believe the way that I can serve and help individuals and have person-to-person encounters is through a ministry of chaplaincy. I believe God has given me gifts of compassion, caring, kindness, love, and listening so that I may serve and minister to individuals in need and to glorify Him. Mother Teresa also says, “We must not be afraid to proclaim Christ’s love to love as He loved. In the work we have to do it does not matter how small and humble it may be, make it Christ’s love in action.”⁷ I feel that some people who gave me the opinion that I should look into social work, may have had a narrow view on ministry. They spoke of ministry in the terms of serving a congregation in a church, where the minister preaches, prays, and serves the needs of the congregation and individual needs. I believe that there are other fields of ministry. Sometimes people forget about people in nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, the homeless, and shut ins. I believe that as a Christian these are the people that need to be reached out to. They may be in desperate need physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. Mother Teresa speaks of small and humble things as being part of God’s work. As a Christian, I believe that through love these people in need may see Christ within us, and we may experience serving Christ through them. “For He Himself said, ‘You did it for me.’”⁸

1 Benenate, Becky and Durepos, Joseph. No Greater Love: Mother Teresa. New World Library: Novato, California, 2002, 5.

2Ibid, 4

3Ibid, 8

4Ibid, 114

5Ibid, 87

6Ibid, 69

7Ibid, 71

8Ibid, 73disconne

~ by jennmatthews on March 11, 2008.