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Catholic Saints
St. Teresa of Calcutta
00:30:55
St. Teresa of Calcutta is known throughout the world as a woman totally committed to the Gospel and to the Catholic Church. Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Mark Giszczak discuss the great Catholic saint of the poor, Teresa of Calcutta.
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Narrator
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Tim Gray
I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and Joining me is Dr. Mark Giescheck, who is a professor here at the Augustine Institute as well. And we're going to talk about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, this incredible saint that God gave the church in our recent modern times. And you know, every saint has a story that's remarkable. And every saint, especially Mother Teresa, has something to teach us. And I think Mother has several things to teach us. And I know that for myself and for Dr. Mark Yisczyk, we both have had the privilege and the blessing of giving retreats for the Missionary of Charity Sisters, Mother Teresa's sisters at different convents, some for their contemplative order, some for their active order. And I've had the blessing to do that all up and down the east coast and the west coast and kind of all over in the United States. And I know that, Dr. Mark, you've had the opportunity of going several times now. Was it three years in a row you've been invited to Calcutta to give a retreat at the Mother House. And so that just has given us a real personal relationship with the missionaries and Charity Sisters and in a sense with all these great daughters, spiritual daughters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And so Mother Teresa is somebody that we have a particular fondness for and wanted to have a conversation which we haven't pre scripted. We don't do that for any of these form now conversations, but we just want to make a conversation about Mother and really dive into what does she have to teach us today? We know she did a lot of great works and everyone knows many of those great works, but what can we learn and how can she help us today? Let's talk about that, Mark.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah.
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Interjector
Yeah.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Mother Teresa is such a profound person. Right. Because she became so famous, she almost became like a trope or something. And when people mention Mother, you know, people have a kind of image in their mind of her appearing on television or giving a graduation address or whatever.
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Tim Gray
She really became, getting the Nobel Peace.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Prize or getting the Nobel Prize. Right. She became quite famous in her lifetime, quite late in her lifetime, right around age 50. But I think it's important to reflect on her early life to really get a sense of who she is. So she was born in Kosovo in 1910, and really as a child she began to experience a call to be a missionary. And I think that's profound. That when she's 11, 12, 13, she's already beginning to experience this call from the Lord.
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Interjector
So.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
So that when she's 18, she joins the Loredo sisters, who are based in Ireland. So she moves to Ireland to learn English, and she says goodbye to her family and will never see them again.
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Interjector
Wow.
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Tim Gray
What a sacrifice, right? I mean, talk about going on mission.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah. I mean, back then it was really serious. You know, it was like once you left, it was not expected that you would ever return even for a visit. And so she went first to Ireland, and then about a year later, she took a ship all the way to Calcutta in India and completed her formation there. And her story is really multi layered and yet really simple. She just said yes to Jesus and she said yes over and over in a variety of contexts and circumstances. And I think one of the ways that she used to describe her own experience of her own vocation was a call within a call. So she was part of the Laredo sisters community. She taught at a high school in Calcutta. She was just one of the sisters. And yet the Lord spoke to her heart in a very special way, particularly on this one train ride she took on her way to a retreat on September 10, 1946. And the Lord gave her a new call within that call. And it's hard to know why.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
The Lord would do that.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
With most people you have one vocation, right? You pursue that vocation and the Lord takes you where he will. But with her, she had a vocation within a vocation, a calling within a calling. The Loredo sisters were able to train her and teach her how to be a good nun, how to be a good religious sister, how to pray, how to teach. She learned several languages and this sort of thing. But in the end, her calling was to serve the poorest of the poorest.
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Tim Gray
Right. And it's such a remarkable. And I invite our viewers to, if you want to, especially this weekend, it's a really great time for family movie night to watch the movie we have on formed on Mother Teresa of Calcutta. It'll give you a little visual into the story and a little bit of an outline and a bit of the character of Mother. But you know, this call within a call, as you mentioned, Mark, as she called it, that's how she discovered this was to serve the poor. And you have to understand that the Sisters of Laredo are doing this high school, but this is for the upper class in India, Right. This is for those who are successful and established in India at that time, whereas you just have one of the poorest countries in the world and just abject poverty. And so when you go to the high school, when you go to the convent, you kind of in this little oasis, this little island in the midst of incredible poverty that the sisters themselves didn't experience, they lived next to. But the students they had were, well to do. They lived very differently than the average person in Calcutta. And for mother to leave that comfort in that area and to go and to take care of the poor and she has no money. It's not like she's like someone's funding her to save. Would you run a soup kitchen? She has nothing. So how is she going to serve the poorest of the poor with nothing? What does she do?
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah, well, I mean, it takes her a long time to get all of the appropriate permissions from all the right ecclesiastical officials to approve of her, you know, essentially forming a new community, starting on a solo basis. But it's funny, you know, I've seen that school in Calcutta where she used to teach, and it is surrounded by a big wall, you know, and it might be helpful just to kind of paint a little picture of what Calcutta was like back then for people to understand. So Calcutta was a city that was actually founded by the British and India was under British rule for quite a long time. And Mother Teresa is there right at the tail end of British rule, which ends in 1948. And so there's a kind of strange social hierarchy in Calcutta. Part of it is based on the caste system in Hinduism, and part of it is based on this sort of British colonial experience. And the city is very, very populated, largely with village people who have moved to the city looking for economic opportunities. But from our perspective, there wouldn't be much of opportunities at all.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
There are lots of people living in the slums, which are essentially like very, very low rent apartments, let's put it that way.
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Interjector
Right?
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Where people basically have kind of makeshift dwelling spaces. There are even people in Calcutta that are called people, pavement dwellers who literally have a piece of pavement on the sidewalk. And that's where they and their family live and sleep, often for generations. So Calcutta is a really strange city, especially back in the 1940s, and has all of these different layers of poverty and wealth. It's one of the only cities in the world where you'll find a very wealthy person's home right next to a slum. And so it's kind of like a city full of paradoxes where most cities sort of segregate. The wealthy people live over here, the poor People live over here and not in Calcutta. Right. It's all together in one place. And so it's kind of beautiful and chaotic and exciting and whatever, all at the same time. And so Mother goes out into that environment to seek out the poorest of the poor, the people who are the lowest on that social hierarchy, in order to fulfill the call of Jesus, which is to serve the least of these. And she views this not as a social work. Yeah, like an organized. Yeah, NGO type of. Kind of like, how can we deliver the most aid the most efficiently to the most number of people? She's not that kind of person.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
That's not what she's there to deliver. And she doesn't even see physical hunger or physical poverty as the greatest evil.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
She sees a spiritual poverty and the poverty of being unwanted as the greatest of poverties. And this is really hard for outsiders to understand because they look at Mother and they say, well, why don't you have more medical training? Or why don't you send your sisters to medical school? Or why don't you practice the most modern methods of care for people? How come you don't do this? How come you don't do that? Why don't you use your resources more efficiently? And I think from her perspective, she's not there to engage in some sort of efficient planning process. She is there to satisfy the thirst of Jesus in the poorest of the poor.
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Tim Gray
Well, Mark, I think that says so much right there, because I think. I think it's driven by two things. One is, as you mentioned, even as a young girl, age 11 and 12, she felt called to do mission. And so this call within a call is a mission within a mission. So she's not leaving the idea of being a missionary. But the other thing is, I think as she's called by our Lord to go serve the poor, he doesn't give her a blueprint how to do it. She doesn't know exactly what that means. She leaves. As you said, she's solo. She doesn't have any other people following her. Originally, it's just her. She has no money, no backing, no donors. You know, the sisters of Loretto said, this is crazy. You're going to fail. You can't accomplish anything this way. And she goes out there into the streets by herself and she does what she can only do for the poor, and that is love them. And what you realize as you look at Mother, that's exactly what Jesus wanted her to do, is to love the poorest of the poor. And so she was exactly, precisely equipped to do that. And I think sometimes we feel like, well, you know, there's poor people out there, and unless you're really rich, you can't really help them. And that misses what Mother wants to show us and what she wants to teach us. And that is we are all equipped, if we have a heart, to love and have experienced the love of Jesus Christ. We're all equipped to love the poorest of the poor. And then Mother's going to teach when she comes to America that, guess what? In America, there's a poverty that she hasn't even seen in India. And that is a spiritual poverty.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah, yeah. Now, it's probably worth mentioning, right, that one of their early ministries was care for the dying. So there's a place in Calcutta called Kali Ghat, and it was essentially like a sort of pilgrimage house for Hindu pilgrims that were going to the temple of Kali. And it had essentially fallen into disrepair. And Mother would use that place as a place to care for dying people that she found on the street, and she would bring them to this place for them to die with dignity, right? Not in the way the world thinks of it, through assisted suicide, but to die with somebody sitting at their bedside, somebody talking with them, somebody comforting them in their difficulties, making sure they have something to eat and to drink. And Caligat is still one of the central ministries of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, and there's a whole section for men and a whole section for women, and they have all of these beds there. And Mother would come, when she would come, she would, you know, all these sisters would be working, you know, helping all these dying people. The first thing she would do when she arrived is clean the toilets. And, you know, like, I just don't think most leaders of most organizations would do that, or most founders of religious orders, probably. But Mother was so conscious of the fact that she had to model humility for the other sisters, and she had to live it herself to her core. And that that was part of what she did, Right. That's just part of how she lived out her spirituality of humility. In every missionary of Charity House, right next to the crucifix, there's a little sign that says, I thirst. And this is really a key to understanding Mother's spirituality and the spirituality of the whole missionary of Charity Order, which is they view themselves as satisfying Jesus thirst through their ministry to the poorest of the poor through. And it has kind of like a two. Like two layers, maybe three layers, maybe more layers, but one of those is in prayer. They spend many hours a day in prayer in order to fuel their ministry, Right. And so by being with Jesus in prayer, they're consoling the heart of Jesus, right. They're satisfying his thirst for their souls as sisters. And then when they go out into the world to serve the poorest of the poor, they're serving Jesus in the poor, right. They're satisfying his thirst and his hunger. Every time they satisfy the thirst and hunger of one of the people that.
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Tim Gray
They encounter that idea of the ithirst. I remember the first time I saw that cross. I went in college and for a spring break, a friend of mine, encouraged by our sports director, went to D.C. and at that time, gosh, that was probably the. In the late 80s, but. Or mid to late 80s, and, you know, the AIDS epidemic had broken out and there was a house for those who were dying of AIDS and caring for them that the sisters had in D.C. and I remember visiting. And at that time, I knew nothing about aids, and it was still early on, so people. There was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. You know, how can I catch this? Am I going to help? But I remember the first thing the sisters did is the sisters took us up to the chapel before any orientation, before any explanation, before anything else. She took us up to the chapel and left. She said, I'll come back and get you. So we're up in the. She didn't even tell us she was going to come back and get us. She just left us in the chapel. And I remember looking at that large crucifix and the words I thirst, and then coming out of the chapel and encountering somebody who was very ill and dying of aids, and it just. Yeah. That experience of trying to give love to others to satisfy the thirst of Christ and their thirst for God is so powerful, but it's front and center of their mission.
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Interjector
Yeah.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And I think, you know, one of the things that's so beautiful about the Missionaries of charity and about St. Teresa's spirituality is it's so simple. It's beguilingly simple.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
It's easy to think, oh, well, you know, it's not very sophisticated spirituality. This is like very, you know, pedestrian, humdrum, normal or, you know, just like very simple for simple people. And if you hear Mother Teresa speak, right. She always says the same things. You know, she says very basic truths about the gospel. Jesus loves you.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Jesus wants you.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And she says these very basic things. And if you listen to her give several different talks, and of course you can look them up on the Internet.
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Tim Gray
We have one of the talks on Formed, actually.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Great.
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Tim Gray
A talk by Mother Teresa that was recorded. So it's phenomenal.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
It's like she always says the same things, right? There's very simple things, very simple truths. And what is powerful about her message is the gospel is true.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
It's not that it's, you know, has all of these interesting intellectual features, Right. It's just simply that it's true and that she's willing to live it out in that spirit of humble service. One of the other lessons of Mother Teresa's life and the Missionaries of Charity in general that I think is really important is was part of the screening process, Right. If you wanted to join the Missionaries of Charity as a sister, one of the things they looked for was cheerfulness, right? So. And that's one of their values as sisters, right. Are you going to be able to serve the poor? Are you going to be able to pray daily? Are you going to be able to deal with the other sisters in community on a daily basis in a cheerful manner?
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
So if you show up as a candidate and you're dour and sour and you're not nice or whatever, and you're always sad, you're not going to make the cut.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Because cheerfulness, even though it's not exactly a New Testament doctrine or something, cheerfulness hides a multitude of virtues.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Cheerfulness hides a kind of patience, a kindness, a gentleness with other people, a Christlikeness. And that, that quality that Mother Teresa had in spades is something that she wanted all of her sisters to embody.
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Tim Gray
I know Mother would talk about joy is the net by which we catch souls.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yes.
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Tim Gray
So she was a missionary and she knew that one of the tactics of a good missionary is joy. And it really comes out of our encounter with Christ. Right. She was in love with Jesus, and that gave her joy. And then she shared that joy with others.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yes.
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Tim Gray
And it's so striking, you know, from spending time with the mission as a Charity sisters. Whenever you're with these sisters, it doesn't matter if I've been in the Bronx many times with them. You know, I've been in Newark, New Jersey. I mean, some really bad, bad neighborhoods in some of these places. And they live a cheerfulness and a joy that you don't find in million dollar mansions. And they're living total poverty and they're joyful.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah.
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Tim Gray
It's amazing.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah. I mean, the missionaries, their spirit of poverty is extreme.
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Tim Gray
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
So, you know, we hear about, you know, people in religious orders Taking vows of poverty. But if you actually go and visit them, oftentimes they have cars or they have computers or they have other luxuries, right. That the MCs do not have.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
They still use telephones and typewriters.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
They don't have computers. They don't do any of the Internet stuff. They don't have a lot of modern conveniences. Right. They don't even take showers.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
They.
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Tim Gray
So each sister has, like, in their homes, they don't. They don't have hot water. I remember when mother was installing a new home, dedicated a new home in San Francisco, and she took the hot water, water heater out and they said, well, if you don't have hot water, you don't meet code. And she said, she goes, if I have to meet code, then you're not going to have the house to take care of people, because we're leaving. And she won. That was. She's simple, but she was one tough cookie. I mean, she didn't relent and she could stand up to anybody. But the point is that they have to wash. They get a bucket of water, right, to wash with.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they're hot water. Their possessions are something you could, I mean, basically hold in your hand, right? You get a bucket, a brush, your prayer books, two saris, you know, a few garments, you know, and maybe a couple prayer cards or a couple other things, you know, and they wash their clothes by hand every day. You know, they clean their room that way. They sleep on cots. You know, they live a very, very simple life, just down to the barest essentials. And there's something so powerful about the spirit of poverty in that kind of extreme practice, right? Where you see, like, wow, like, I think that I need all of these conveniences and all of these things, whether it be, you know, cell phones or watches or automobiles or, I don't know, snow blowers or all of the weird things that we have. And then you watch someone live their life with just a bucket's worth of stuff, and you think, they have a freedom that I don't have.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
They have access to a higher level of freedom than I have because they're able to live without all of these things.
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Tim Gray
Well, there's so much to talk about with that. But, you know, one of the things that people think about with Mother Teresa, Calcutta Mark, is that she suffered. Well, it came out after she died that she had this interior suffering of this dark night of the soul. And, you know, a lot of the world in the big Press, they were, here's this great saint who is a celebrity, super famous, you know, the uber nun Catholic. And she felt that God wasn't there. And I think a lot of people in the secular media thought, aha, see, this whole religion thing is not much to it, but we who know the Catholic tradition of the dark night know that this is something that St. John of the Cross went through and talked about and, and other writers. What would you say, what do we have to learn about what she endured for the dark night of the soul, this struggle she had?
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah, well, it says in scripture, right. That we walk by faith, not by sight. And that's what the dark night is all about.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And spiritual darkness from the outside, it can be like, oh, darkness, that sounds like unhappiness, right. These people must be very, very unhappy. I don't think that Mother Teresa was an unhappy person. In fact, everyone who met her said that she was characterized by joy. So I don't think that's the right read.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And I think that would be the sort of, you know, 5 cent cheap version from the media would be, oh, well, she was very unhappy and she just pretended or something. I don't think it's quite that simple.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
The kind of spiritual darkness that St. John of the Cross talks about and that I think Mother Teresa experienced is the darkness of faith. The darkness of faith. I thought faith was a light, right? What do you mean darkness?
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
It means that when we begin to walk by faith, we start to lose our ability to follow the ways of the world.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And to walk by sight and that as we walk by faith, more and more and more.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
We live in the spirit of utter trust in Jesus. I think it's akin to like walking through your house in the dark, right. Where like, you, you maybe you can't touch, you can't see anything, but you know exactly where the corners are and where the pieces of furniture are and you're able to walk through the house. And I think walking by faith is similar to that, right. Where you don't have the kind of pedestrian confidence that we normally have in like, our abilities, but instead it's a kind of total trust in the Lord.
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Tim Gray
She lived that trust out in a deep way, I think. And what you say, Mark, really echoes with so much of St. John of the Cross and his dark night of the soul. I think there's another way of looking at it too, an additional layer. She really, when she worked for the poor, she didn't want to be a social worker, as you mentioned. An NGO working for the poor. She wanted her sisters to be poor and to show them, because why? Why did they have to be poor to serve the poor? Because they weren't serving the poor and simply helping them to be fed and educated and giving them material things that they lacked. Now, Mother would feed the poor and the hungry and do what she could to clothe them and house them. But the sisters had to live a comparable life to the poor in terms of their food, in terms of their shelter, and all these things we talked about. But Mother really wanted to identify herself with the poorest of the poor so that she would know them and she would be able to love them where they're at. And, you know, leaving the Loretto Convent and leaving the privilege and the. All that she had there, I think living with the poor was really part of it. Identifying one of the sisters who was a student of hers early on, One of the early sisters told me on a retreat that I was at in Harlem, she mentioned that she thought Mother had to identify with the poorest of the poor in such a way that she had to take the cross of the poorest of the poor on themselves. That the greatest suffering of the poorest of the poor is not lacking hot water and good shelter and nice food and a comfortable mattress and bed. Mother did all those things. But ultimately, the greatest poverty of the poorest of the poor is being and experiencing solitude and feeling unloved. And so as Mother's love for Jesus grew, her thirst for Jesus grew, and that desire for union with Christ was growing. And those consolations that she would experience earlier on in her life as a sister became less and less as she started her new order. And I think the pain she had was the desire that her love burned so deeply in her. That desire to be united to Christ and not experiencing that being united. She loved Jesus, and she was joyful about what Jesus did and who he was. But her desire started to grow. It's like this thirst that she couldn't quench. And part of that was because of her desire for God growing and her holiness. And part of it was our Lord allowing her to feel the pain of the poor in the world who feel abandoned and unloved, which is the greatest poverty that there is in human existence. And for her to not feel, even though she knew in her mind that Jesus loved her, she didn't feel that love. She didn't experience that love. And she experienced that darkness or that poverty. It was her identifying with the poorest of the poor and carrying their cross so that God would bring out, pour out the grace that others would take up the poor and make them feel loved, whether it was her sisters, her co workers, or you and I who are called to. To show the poor that they have a dignity and that they have a beauty, despite their brokenness and woundedness. And as Mother would say, the distressing disguise of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. And I think Mother, not being able to find Jesus in that interior prayer, she had to encounter Jesus, and it drove her even more to reach out to the poor.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah, I think one of the ways in which this is symbolized is in the Mother House. If you go to mass there, they have all of the windows open, and it's on a really busy street. And so you're constantly hearing the traffic noise filter in from the street. You know, people yelling or cars honking or whatever. All throughout Mass, all throughout adoration, all throughout the homily. Sometimes it's very hard to hear because you're hearing all this traffic noise coming in the whole time. And if you ask the sisters about it, right. They'll say, well, Mother wanted us to share in the spiritual poverty of the poor.
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Interjector
Wow.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And they could have put the chapel on a different side of the building so that you wouldn't hear the traffic noise as much. They could have installed air conditioning. They could just leave the windows closed so that you didn't hear all the traffic noise. But the goal is so that they have that experience of sharing the spiritual poverty of the poor so that they can do a better job of ministering to them, understanding their situation, and truly being in sympathy with them. And, I mean, I just think that they do such an amazing job, not just of living out the spirit of poverty, but of living it out with joy.
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Interjector
Right?
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Living it out with a Christlikeness and a cheerfulness that really sets an example and sets a tone for their whole ministry. And I mean, I think that, again, from the outside, people think, oh, well, you could be more efficient in your use of time and resources and whatever. Why do you pray so much? Why don't you cut back on the prayer so you can do more service?
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Interjector
And.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
And from Mother's perspective and the sister's perspective, it's their prayer, their spiritual life that fuels their life of ministry. And so they spend these hours with Jesus in the chapel in order that they have something to give when they go out and serve the poorest of the poor. I mean, it's really exactly how the active life and contemplative life should be together.
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Interjector
Right.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
In the same life.
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Tim Gray
You know, Mark, one of the things I think might happen, and I know.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
This is.
- [27:47]
Tim Gray
Not certain, but Mother, of course, is a saint. And when she died, I think we all knew she was going to be canonized. But I think she also could become a doctor of the church. I think her profound teaching of discovering Jesus and the distressing, the disguise of the poor, she really is the model interpreter, exegete, as we would say in biblical scripture, servos of Matthew 25, verse 36. And following that, whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did unto me. And I think she's a great teacher for that.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
Yeah. A wonderful way in which that's symbolized in their prayer life is when they do eucharistic adoration and they say the divine praises. We normally say, blessed be Jesus in the most holy sacrament of the altar. They add a line to that prayer, blessed be Jesus, the poorest of the poor.
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Tim Gray
Oh, wow, I forgot about that.
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Dr. Mark Giescheck
It's so powerful.
- [28:40]
Interjector
Right.
- [28:40]
Dr. Mark Giescheck
Because their eucharistic worship is united with their service to the poor.
- [28:45]
Interjector
Right.
- [28:45]
Dr. Mark Giescheck
They're one and the same thing.
- [28:47]
Interjector
Right.
- [28:47]
Dr. Mark Giescheck
And I think that's essential to understanding who she is.
- [28:51]
Interjector
Right.
- [28:51]
Dr. Mark Giescheck
And how to live out that spirit of service to the poor in a Christian way.
- [28:57]
Tim Gray
Well, there's so much we can all learn from Mother Teresa. And of course, she's a missionary of charity. And just to go back to the name of her order, she wanted to be a missionary at a young age, as Mark mentioned, you know, 11, 12, she wanted to go anywhere in the world. And she ends up in India. And she ends up founding this call within a call that Jesus gives her to go serve the poorest of the poor. And she becomes a missionary of charity. And you know, what a great sign for us. And if, you know, I just would encourage you, if you have a hard time seeing the Lord and hearing him in prayer and whatever else, do what Mother did. Learn to be consistent in prayer. But secondly, go find somebody in need and serve them. And you will discover a joy that comes only from the grace given by Jesus Christ, because he blesses those who bless him in the poorest of the poor. And that's what we're called to do. So make sure you spend some time. May this weekend watch that movie on Mother Teresa, listen to the talk that we have on the audio talk on formed and reflect on this wonderful life and be encouraged and imitate her joy, because we have much to be joyful for in the Lord. As Nehemiah says, the joy of the Lord is our strength and our Lord was Mother Teresa Calcutta's strength and that's why she was joyful. Thank you and God Bless.
- [30:23]
Narrator
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