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Mother Teresa, Her People and Her Work

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With the news from Rome that we may see Mother Teresa recognized as a saint during our lifetime, I wanted to find out why. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi certainly held her in high esteem as witnessed by her foreword written in 1975: "How appropriate that this book should begin with St. Francis' beautiful and well-loved prayer. For it so eloquently epitomizes the gentleness, the love and the compassion that radiate from Mother Teresa's tiny person. Who else in this wide world reaches out to the friendless and the needy so naturally, so simply, so effectively? Tagore wrote "there rest Thy feet where live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost." That is where Mother Teresa is to be found - with no thought of, or slightest discrimination between color or creed, language or country. She lives the truth that prayer is devotion, prayer is service. Service is her concern, her religion, her redemption. To meet her is to feel utterly humble, to sense the power of tenderness, the strength of love."

This book is a collection of eyewitness accounts from Mother Teresa's Co-workers during the early years and is a very helpful historical record of how Mother Teresa implemented her goals: to love and serve the poor and to see Jesus in everyone. Desmond Doig has given us a wonderful insight into Mother Teresa through the words of people who knew her well.

Father Henry was a Belgian missionary who landed in India in 1938, never to return. He tells us that: "Mother has a magic in her. There was this beggar woman who came to Mother for help. She was given a good feed and slept in Mother Teresa's bed. Mother called her 'Granny'".

Sister Agnes was Mother Teresa's first postulant. "Nowadays we are being helped by a lot of organizations, but in the beginning we had none of these. When we started Mother used to bring a tin and announce in the parish, "Don't throw away your food." The Sisters used to go out with similar tins and collect leftovers and give them to the poor people. We used to go from house to house. You can die of disease, but to die bit by bit, starving, there cannot be anything worse than that. Mother is so humble. Even when she goes on planes she asks for whatever food is left over."

Sister Bernard told the author: "Ours was a different kind of work altogether, among people neither valued nor respected in society. That we should spend our time and our lives working for the poorest, working with lepers ... how could they understand? We realized that there were a lot of undernourished children and poor dying people that the hospitals could do nothing for. How many can they take? And besides, medicine alone is not enough. We just used to try and bring them relief on the streets. When they died we used to inform the police. For five years we did that, then Mother realized we had to open a home."

Perhaps the biggest lesson we can learn from this book is summed up in Mother Teresa's own words: "Prayer without action is no prayer at all." Perhaps that is why she was held in such high esteem. Perhaps that is why she will probably be recognized as a saint.