Mother Teresa's relationship with God and her commitment to those she
served--the poorest of the poor--is here powerfully explored in her own
words. Taken largely from her private lessons to her sisters, published
here for the first time, Where There is Love, There is God unveils her
extraordinary faith in and surrender to God's will. This book is in some
way a sequel to Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, in which her own very
private spiritual struggles were explained. Sent to alleviate the
sufferings of the poor, she assumed their struggles and pain in the
depths of her heart. This led to particularly intense anguish which she
lived through with heroic courage and fidelity over several decades. As
important as this aspect of her life is, that remarkable testimony of
her life and her words intensifies the need and desire to know more of
her thought. There is much she can teach us as we face our daily
struggles or sufferings, which can at times be unusually severe. Where
There is Love, There is God, though not an exhaustive anthology of
Mother Teresa's teaching, nonetheless shows what she believed and taught
about important issues that confront all people. Due to her constant
interaction with people of diverse backgrounds, no life situation was
foreign to her and in this book her role is primarily one of teacher and
guide.
Love is perhaps the word that best summarizes Mother Teresa's life and
message. The title reflects what she proclaimed during her entire life:
God is alive, present, and "still loves the world through you and
through me". Mother Teresa sought to be an extension of God's heart and
hands in the world of today. She was called to be a missionary of
charity, a carrier of God's love to each person she met, especially
those most in need. Yet she did not think that this was a vocation
uniquely hers; each person is in some way called to be a carrier of
God's love. Through the practical and timely advice she offers, Mother
Teresa sets us on the path to closer union with God and greater love for
our brothers and sisters.
MOTHER TERESA (1910-1997) was born in Skopje (present-day Macedonia),
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 and was beatified in 2003. Editor
of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, FATHER BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK, M.C.,
Ph.D., was associated with Mother Teresa for twenty years and is now
director of the Mother Teresa Center, which has offices in California,
Mexico, India, and Italy.
"What you are doing I cannot do, what I'm doing you cannot do, but
together we are doing something beautiful for God, and this is the
greatness of God's love for us--To give us the opportunity to become
holy through the works of love that we do because holiness is not the
luxury of the few. It is a very simple duty for you, for me, you in your
position, in your work and I and others, each one of us in the work, in
the life that we have given our word of honor to God....You must put
your love for God in a living action."
-Mother Teresa, From Where There is Love, There is God
