“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded”, Pope Francis said.
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Like prophets and saints before her, Mother Teresa would not “kneel down before anyone but the Almighty” and would not bow before “the fashions or idols of the moment”, said Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State.
“She was very courageous, selfless and reached out to those less fortunate and poor”. In their view, Mother Teresa took advantage of the poor in their city for her own purposes. Some argued that, with the canonization so closely following her passing, the nun’s human flaws and weaknesses were too fresh in people’s minds.
Blessed day: Phillip Phillips and his wife Josephine with a photograph of St Teresa of Kolkata and his mother, and her Rosary beads.
Like her, we must all strive to fight against two dimensions of poverty: lack of physical necessities and lack of love.
“I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them”.
She added, “What you do I can not do but what I do you can not do”.
“Then, being Mother Teresa, she said to Mum and Dad, “You go away, you go away because you’ve already heard everything”, Mr Phillips said.
“That’s the strength and courage we take from Mother Teresa”. Mother Teresa was unerringly direct. Johnson, then known as Sister Donata, has written a memoir about that period in her life called An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life. And every time I enter the little chapel in my residence, I reflect on the fact that Mother prayed there with Cardinal Keeler…and I keep her relic in the altar.
Do I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems facing our clients or our community, our nation, or our world?
She was recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint on September 4. One is a woman from Calcutta, who claims her stomach tumor was cured by praying to the saint. I was among those involved in helping set up an AIDS hospice in Washington and on a number of occasions offered Mass for the final vows of her sisters. But together we are doing something handsome for God.
So her views on the matter, like so much else about her life and times, are open to interpretation, speculation and debate. This was true of politicians, church officials, and busy people whom she persuaded to spend a night each week with poor.
Following this logic, women who have abortions are sociopaths completely devoid of empathy and the ability to love, as oppose to women trapped in desperate circumstances or who simply don’t want to be mothers.
Naturally, medical safety isn’t exactly of paramount importance to a woman who oversaw an order run on volunteers with virtually zero medical experience, and failed to distinguish between curable and incurable patients, often damning patients who otherwise could have survived.
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He’d like to think his mum and Mother Teresa were both rejoicing in Heaven during the canonisation on September 4. MacDonald, who has read much of the letters from Mother Teresa to Egan that are in the collection – Egan’s part of the correspondence appears lost to history – said Egan became an advocate for Mother Teresa’s ministry. But as Mother Teresa said, ‘We are not here to do great things but to do small things with great love.’ A simple good deed, therefore, is significant.
