Love is Winning: Mother Teresa

Ever heard of the term “working your way up?”  It usually refers to the process by which someone moves up the corporate ladder of a company to higher and higher positions of influence, responsibility, and importance.

So, for example, let’s say you get a job at McDonald’s your Junior year of high school.  You most likely would start at the “bottom.”  You would go through training and you would be given the jobs that no one else really wanted to do.  You’d take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, clear the grease trap, go into the playland ball pit after some kid puked his happy meal all over the place, etc.  Not fun. 

As you proved yourself to be a good worker in these areas you’d eventually move up to areas of greater responsibility, influence, and diminished grossness.  You’d become a cashier, then maybe an assistant manager, then manager, then area manager, then you could go to the corporate office and write reports, do payrolls, and send emails to all your lowly employees.  The more you prove yourself, the higher you move up in the company, the more important you become, the less “serving” type jobs you’d have to do.  The American Dream!

Well, Mother Teresa saw it differently than McDonald’s.  When a young man came to work with her mission in Calcutta, India, she walked him to the office building and had him start working on filing papers, doing reports, and making phone calls.  She then told him,

“once you prove yourself faithful with the tasks of office work, you can begin cleaning the office, emptying the trash cans, and mopping the floors.  Once you prove yourself faithful in this, you can step outside and clean the gutters and sidewalks where the sick and dying walk to get to their places of rest and care.  Then, if you do well with these jobs, you can enter the place where the sick and dying live.  You can begin to care for them, dress their wounds, and feed them.  Then, if you prove yourself faithful in these things, you can clean their wounds, beds, and bathrooms.”

Mother Teresa believed that the highest position of importance and influence in the Kingdom of Jesus was in service to the sickest, poorest, and most desperate in the world.  She believed that servanthood was the highest privilege a human being could achieve.

She was born in 1910 and at the age of 12 decided she wanted to give her life to the Lord and serving the poorest of the poor.  She became a nun and eventually moved to Calcutta, India where she taught poor children in the community.  One day, as she was walking outside the walls of the church and school, she saw the men, women, and children of the street.  The “untouchables” of India.  These were blind, leprous, sick, and dying, finishing their days in the filth of the open sewers.  She knew that these people needed love.  Even if it was just in the final weeks and months of their life, she wanted them to leave this world knowing that God’s love was real.  She wanted them to die in loving arms.

From this point on she spent the next fifty years of her life, until she died at 87, caring for the sick, blind, deaf, diseased, and dying people of Calcutta.  As people saw what she began to do, others joined her.  So many joined her, inspired by her example, that by the end of her life over 400 other missions all around the world were established under the name of her “Sisters of Charity.”  She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and she was awarded countless other awards from leaders all across the world including Pope John Paul the II and President Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Mother Teresa’s life is that she was human.  A very tiny, weak looking woman, she had many doubts concerning God and His presence in her life.  This makes sense, since she saw so much suffering in the world.  However, while some people call her a hypocrite, insincere, and a “non-Christian,” I believe her willingness to serve God despite what she felt, in the midst of dark doubt, makes her an even greater example of the Christian life.  We may not always “feel” God’s presence.  We may not always be absolutely sure that He is present in our lives, but He calls us to love, serve, and believe Him anyways.  When we are able to believe God and serve others in His name despite our feelings, we exercise true and lasting faith.

Mother Teresa showed us and the countless men, women, and children that received her care and attention while dying in her arms that LOVE IS WINNING.

 Check out what she had to say about life and love:

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

“Live simply so others may simply live.”

“I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.”

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

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