A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve - Hardcover

Mother Teresa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0451498208 ISBN 13: 9780451498205

Publisher: Image, 2016

Synopsis

Published to coincide with Pope Francis's Year of Mercy and the Vatican's canonization of Mother Teresa, this new book of unpublished material by a humble yet remarkable woman of faith whose influence is felt as deeply today as it was when she was alive, offers Mother Teresa’s profound yet accessible wisdom on how we can show mercy and compassion in our day-to-day lives.
 
For millions of people from all walks of life, Mother Teresa's canonization is providentially taking place during Pope Francis's Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. This is entirely fitting since she is seen both inside and outside of the Church as an icon of God's mercy to those in need.
 
Compiled and edited by Brian Kolodiejckuk, M.C., the postulator of Mother Teresa’s cause for sainthood, A Call to Mercy presents deep yet accessible wisdom on how we can show compassion in our everyday lives. In her own words, Mother Teresa discusses such topics
as:
        the need for us to visit the sick and the imprisoned
        the importance of honoring the dead and informing the ignorant
        the necessity to bear our burdens patiently and forgive willingly
        the purpose to feed the poor and pray for all
        the greatness of creating a “civilization of love” through personal service to others
 
Featuring never before published testimonials by people close to Mother Teresa as well as prayers and suggestions for putting these ideas into practice, A Call to Mercy is not only a lovely keepsake, but a living testament to the teachings of a saint whose ideas are important, relevant and very necessary in the 21st century.

About this title

About the Author:

MOTHER TERESA was born in Skopje (present-day Macedonia) in 1910, and joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin in 1928.  She left the Loreto order in 1948 to begin the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.  Her service to the poorest of the poor became her life’s work.  She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died in 1997 and was beatified in 2003. 
 
FATHER BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK, M.C. the editor of the New York Times bestseller, Come Be My Light met Mother Teresa in 1977 and was associated with her until her death in 1997.  He is postulator of the cause of the beatification and canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Director of the Mother Teresa Center.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

One

Feed the Hungry

“I saw the children—­their eyes shining with hunger—­I don’t know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often.” As these words make clear, Mother ­Teresa’s sensibility to the hungry is evident in the way she was moved by her direct contact with them. She was stirred in the depths of her heart by her encounter with those suffering real physical hunger, as is clear especially in the way she recounted the stories of her experiences with the hungry. These experiences began when she was a child. Her mother had accustomed her and her siblings to serve and look after people from the street. When she witnessed hunger (or any other need of the poor) her reaction was “We have to do something about it.” She then did anything possible (and at times also the nearly impossible) in order to bring food to the hungry. At times, she tried to literally “move the world” to provide food for those who were starving.

Hunger may be something that is remote from our experience or from our immediate surroundings. Maybe we “meet” the poor who suffer hunger only through the disturbing reports about some faraway disaster. However, if we “open our eyes to see,” as Mother Teresa challenges us to do, we might encounter many more people suffering from having their basic need for sustenance unmet.

Mother Teresa is known not for setting up great programs that resolve world hunger (worthy and necessary as they are) but for “feeding the hungry,” one by one, one at a time. Yet in doing so she made a great difference first in the lives of these individuals, and ultimately in the world.

There is another type of hunger that Mother Teresa began to speak of, especially after opening her houses in the West. She often repeated that people are “not only hungry for bread but hungry for love.” Though suffering from this need is not commonly referred to as poverty, she realized that this type of poverty was “so much more difficult to remove.” Thus it was also this “hunger for love” that she wanted to alleviate. She challenged her sisters, “You are meant to be that love and compassion to the people here [in the West].”

When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied, I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society—that poverty is so hurtful and so much, and I find that very difficult. Our sisters are working amongst that kind of people in the West.

Finally, Mother Teresa found another type of hunger, in countries both poor and rich, among people of all classes and religious backgrounds. “People are hungry for God,” she used to say. This reality of “spiritual hunger,” which she experienced deeply and encountered wherever she went, she addressed in a simple and timely manner. She wanted to be “God’s love, His compassion, His presence” wherever she went, so that people looking at her might come to know the God whom she wished to reflect.

HER WORDS

It’s Because He Loved

Before [Jesus] taught the people, He had pity on the multitude, and He fed them. He made a miracle. He blessed the bread, and He fed five thousand people. It’s because He loved the people. He had pity on them. He saw the hunger in their faces and He fed them. And only then He taught them.1

More than ever people want to see love in action through our humble works—­how necessary it is for us to be in love with Jesus—­to be able to feed Him in the hungry and the lonely. How pure our eyes and hearts must be to see Him in the poor. How clean our hands must be to touch Him in the poor with love and compassion. How clean our words must be to be able to proclaim the Good News to the poor.2

The Pain of Hunger

Some time ago one woman came with her child to me and said, “Mother, I went to two, three places to beg some food, for we have not eaten for three days but they told me that I am young and I must work and eat. No one gave me anything.” I went to get some food and by the time I returned the baby in her hand had died of hunger. I hope it was not our convents that refused her.3

We all speak of the terrible hunger. What I have seen in Ethiopia, what I have seen in other places, especially these days in places like Ethiopia, the people in hundreds and thousands are facing death just for [lack of] a piece of bread, for [lack of] a glass of water. People have died in my own hands. And yet we forget, why they and not we? Let us love again, so let us share, let us pray that this terrible suffering be removed from our people.4

The pain of hunger is terrible and that is where you and I must come and give until it hurts. I want you to give until it hurts. And this giving is love of God in action. Hunger is not only for bread, hunger is for love.5

The other day I picked up a child in Calcutta. From her dark eyes I saw she was hungry. And I gave her some bread and she was eating crumb by crumb. I told her, “Eat the bread, you are hungry.”6 I asked her why she eats so slowly. She replied: “I am afraid to eat faster. When I finish this piece, soon I will be hungry again.” I told her: “Eat faster then I will give you more.” That small child already knows the pain of hunger. “I am afraid.” See—­we don’t know. As you can see we do not know what hunger is. We do not know how it is to feel pain because of hunger. I have seen small children dying for [lack of] a cup of milk. I have seen mothers in awful pain because children were dying in their own hands out of hunger. Don’t forget! I am not asking for money. I want you to give of your sacrifice. I want you to sacrifice something you like, something you would like to have for yourself. . . . One day a very poor lady came to our house. She said: “Mother, I want to help but I am very poor. I am going from house to house to wash other people’s clothes every day. I need to feed my children, but I want to do something. Please, let me come every Saturday to wash your children’s clothes for a half an hour.” This woman gave me more than thousands of rupees because she has given me her heart completely.7

This morning I went to see the cardinal of Marseille, who is in charge of Cor Unum, to ask [them] to send food for our people in Africa. There is great poverty in Africa. The other day our sisters wrote that the people just come in front of our gate for food and many of them died of hunger. If the situation continues like now, many are in danger of death; children are dying in the arms of their mothers—­what a terrible suffering. So I went to this cardinal to ask if he could send some food to our sisters. He was very nice; he told me that until our sisters went, they were not aware of the presence of the poor.8

Love, to Be True, Has to Hurt

I had the most extraordinary experience of love of neighbor with a Hindu family. A gentleman came to our house and said, “Mother Teresa, there is a family who has not eaten for so long. Do something.” So I took some rice and went there immediately. And I saw the children—­their eyes shining with hunger. I don’t know if you have ever seen hunger, but I have seen it very often. And the mother of the family took the rice I gave her and went out. When she came back I asked her, “Where did you go; what did you do?” And she gave me a very simple answer: “They [a Muslim family]are hungry also.” What struck me most that she knew, and who are they? A Muslim family. And she knew. And I did not bring any more rice that evening because I wanted them—­Hindus and Muslims—­to enjoy the joy of sharing. But there were those children radiating joy, sharing their joy and peace with their mother because she had the love to give until it hurts, and you see this is where love begins—­at home in the family.9

Love, to be true, has to hurt and this woman who was hungry—­she knew that her neighbor was also hungry, and that family happened to be a Mohammedan family. So it was so touching, so real. This is where we are most unjust to our poor—­we don’t know them. We don’t know them—­how great they are, how lovable they are, how hungry they are for that understanding love.10

We have another word, free. I cannot charge anything for the work I do. People criticize us and say ugly things because of this word, free. The other day I read in one article, written by [a priest], that charity is like a drug for the poor—­that when we give the people things free, it is like giving them drugs. I’ve decided that I will write to him and ask him: “Why did Jesus have pity on the people?” He must have drugged them also when He fed them by the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. He came to give Good News to the people but when He saw that they were hungry and tired, He fed them first. One more question that I’m going to ask him, “Did you ever feel the hunger of the poor?”11

You know we cook for thousands of people in Calcutta. It happened one day that a sister came to me and said, “Mother, we have nothing to cook.” It had never happened before. Then, at nine o’clock a truck arrived, full of bread. The government had closed the schools for the day and sent us the bread. See again, God’s concern. He even closed the schools, but He would not let the hungry ones die—­that tenderness and concern of God.12

We Want to Serve

The other day a Gujarati family came to Dum Dum13 where we have crippled people and undernourished children and TB patients. This family, the whole family, came with cooked food. Once upon a time people would never think of going near to these people. When they came I told the sisters to go and help them in the serving. [To] my surprise they said, “Mother, we want to serve by ourselves.” For them it is a great thing, for they become unclean. This is our privilege. Some of them were even old. Nothing prevented them; unbelievable for a Hindu family to say and to do such things.14

Together, We Can Do Something Beautiful for God

Love is for today; programs are for the future. We are for today; when tomorrow will come we shall see what we can do. Somebody is thirsty for water for today, hungry for food for today. Tomorrow we will not have them if we don’t feed them today. So be concerned with what you can do today.15

I never get mixed up in what governments should or should not do. Instead of spending time [on] those questions I say, “let me do [something] now.” Tomorrow may never come—­our people may be dead by tomorrow. So today they need a slice of bread and a cup of tea; I give it to them today. Somebody was finding fault with the work and said, “Why do you always give them the fish to eat? Why don’t you give them the rod to catch the fish?” So I said, “Our people, they cannot even stand properly on account of hunger and disease, still less, would they be able to hold a rod to catch the fish. But I will keep on giving them the fish to eat and when they are strong enough and they can stand on their feet, I will hand them over to you and you give them the rod to catch the fish.” And I think this is the sharing. This is where we need each other. It’s where what we can do, you may not be able to do. But what you can do, we cannot do. But if we put these two works together, there can be something beautiful for God.16

The other day again, a group of Hindu schoolchildren came from very far. All the first and second prize-­winners went and asked the headmistress to give the money instead of the prizes. So she put all the money in an envelope and gave it to them. Then they all asked: “Now take us to Mother Teresa: we want to give the money to her poor people.” Now see how wonderful it was that they did not use that money for themselves. Because we have created this awareness, the whole world wants to share with the poor. Whenever I accept money or an award or anything, I always take it in the name of the poor, whom they recognize in me. I think I am right, because after all what am I? I am nothing. It is the poor whom they recognize in me that they want to give to, because they see what we do. Today people in the world want to see.17

Tremendous Hunger for Love

In Ethiopia and in India hundreds of people are coming and dying just there for [lack of] a piece of bread. In Rome and London and places like that people die of loneliness and bitterness.18

You see, we have a wrong idea that only hunger for bread is hunger. There is much greater hunger and much more painful hunger: hunger for love, for the feeling of being wanted, to be somebody to somebody. A feeling of being unwanted, unloved, rejected. I think that’s a very great hunger and very great poverty.19

We have houses all over Europe and the United States and other places where there is no hunger for a piece of bread. But there’s a tremendous hunger for love, a feeling of being unwanted, unloved, shut in, rejected, forgotten. There are people who have forgotten what is a human smile, what is a human touch. I think that is very, very great poverty. . . . And it is very difficult to remove that poverty while [satisfying that] hunger for a piece of bread, or nakedness for a piece of cloth, for a home made of bricks . . . , I think that’s the much greater poverty, much greater disease, much greater painful situation of today.20

Another time I was walking through the streets of London in a poor area where our sisters also work. I saw a man in a truly terrible condition sitting there looking so sad and alone. So I walked up to him and took him by the hand and asked him how he was. When I did this he looked up at me and said, “Oh, after such a long time, I feel the warmth of a human hand. After such a long time, someone is touching me.” And then his eyes brightened, and he started to sit up straight. Such a tiny attention had brought Jesus into his life. He had been waiting so long for a show of human love, but it was actually a show of God’s love. These are beautiful examples of the hunger I see in these people, the poorest of the poor, the ignorant and unwanted, the unloved, the rejected, and the forgotten. They are hungry for God. This is something you priests must meet continually; not only a hunger in people suffering physically, but also a great hunger in people suffering spiritually and emotionally—­people suffering in their hearts and souls, especially young people.21

Terrible Hunger for the Word of God

“Where is that hunger in our country?” Yes, there is hunger. Maybe not the hunger for a piece of bread, but there is a terrible hunger for love. There is a terrible hunger for the word of God. I will never forget when we went to Mexico, and we went visiting very poor families. And those people we saw had scarcely anything in their homes, and yet nobody asked for anything. They all asked us: “Teach us the word of God. Give us the word of God.” They were hungry for the word of God. Here, too, in the whole world there is a hunger for God, among the young especially. And it is there that we must find Jesus and satisfy that hunger.22

HER EXAMPLE: The Testimonies

We Carried Food on Our Heads and Waded Through the Water

In 1968 there was a big flood in Calcutta. We went in our truck at night to give food to the people affected by the flood in Tiljala. We carried food on our heads and waded through the water. At one moment the flood current almost carried Sr. Agnes away and so we sent her back to the truck. We were drenched to the skin and freezing. When we returned home at three a.m. Mother was waiting for us at the gate. She had kept hot water for all of us to bathe and a nice strong cup of hot coffee to make us warm. We were very touched by Mother’s tender loving care for us her children.23

Filling the Measuring Container Full and Pressing

Mo...

About this edition

• Publisher: Image
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0451498208
• ISBN 13: 9780451498205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384