come be my light

I have just finished reading the book of Mother Teresa's letters.

It took me a while.

It's pretty intense.

Recently much has been made of her apparent 'crisis of faith'. I know this might surprise you, but the media didn't exactly get it right.

I have always been an admirer of Mother Teresa's. After reading her letters--which begin before her calling to start the Missionaries of Charity and follow through until her death-- I am even more humbled by this woman who gave her life to Jesus in loving the poorest of the poor.

She brought the light of God's love into the darkest of places.

It seemed fitting to me that on September 5, 1997, the night she died, there was an electricity outage in the city. Two separate emergency lines brought in also failed, which had never happened before.

While Calcutta was in darkness, the earthly life of the one who had brought so much light to this city and to the whole world was extinguished.
--Brian Kolodiejchuk, author

Here are just a few words from Mother Teresa. Her letters are filled with them:

"People are hungry for God. What a terrible meeting it would be with our neighbor if we give them only ourselves."

"Do we know who our own poor are? Do we know our neighbor, the poor of our own area? It is easy for us to talk and talk about the poor of other places. Very often we have the suffering, we have the lonely, we have the people--old, unwanted, feeling miserable--and they are near us and we don't even know them. We have no time even to smile at them."

"God is in love with us and keeps giving Himself to the world--through you--through me... May you continue to be the sunshine of His love to your people and thus make your life something truly beautiful for God."

"First thing in the morning... offer Him everything you will say, or do during the day. Love Him with a deep, personal, intimate love..."