The call to holiness guided Mother Teresa throughout her life. She said, “Every day I pray, please let my people grow in holiness. I need holy people to offer to God, I don’t need numbers. That urgency for holiness was what she taught me, by example, by words, by silence. It is not possible for those of us who claim to be her spiritual children to ignore the heroic promise she made to God: “I will give saints to Mother Church.” —Fr. Angelo Scolozzi, M.T.
The following words are from Mother Teresa herself.
- Every human being has a longing for God. Christians go one step further—not only do we long for God but we have the treasure of his presence always with us.
- We cannot say that we love Jesus only in the Eucharist—naturally, we want to put that love into action. We cannot separate the Eucharist and the poor.
- We will be the happiest people in the world if we belong to God, if we place ourselves at his disposal, if we let him use us as he pleases.
- In each of our lives, Jesus comes as the Bread of Life—to be eaten, to be consumed by us. This is how he loves us.
- God is love, and when we love we are like God. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Be perfect as your Father is perfect.
- Only one secret: The closer we come to Jesus, the better we will know his thirst.
- Give yourselves unswervingly to God. Conform yourselves in all things to his glory, to his holy will.
- If you were to die today, what would others say about you? What was in you that was beautiful, that was Christlike, that helped others to pray better? Face yourself, with Jesus at your side, and do not be satisfied with just any answer.
- Our work is not a profession but a vocation, chosen to satiate the thirst of Jesus by total surrender, complete, without counting the cost.
- Nothing will destroy our joy of loving Jesus as much as money. It is one of the keys of the devil that will open any heart. It is the beginning of great evil.
- The reason for our existence is to quench the thirst of Jesus Christ. When he asked for water, the soldier gave him vinegar to drink—but his thirst was for love, for souls, for you and me.
- Joy is prayer. Joy is strength. Joy is love. Joy is a net by which we catch souls.
- The Good News is that God still loves the world through each one of you. You are God’s good news, you are God’s love in action.
- Jesus will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness. Only then, his hand will be free with you.
- If we have a pure heart, then we can see God.
- We must make ourselves attractive to God, like Our Lady. Holiness is a normal thing, nothing extraordinary.
- Give your heart to God, deliberately, knowingly, willingly. It belongs to him.
- Obedience makes us most like Jesus and one with him. If we really obey, it is a constant crucifixion.
- Deepen your prayer life and you will grow in holiness and obtain many graces for the souls entrusted to your care.
- Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you, you can’t begin to know who he wants to be for you, or what he wants you to be for him.
- Let us keep very close to Our Lady and she will make that same spirit grow in each one of us.
- You don’t know how very happy I am to let God just do whatever he likes with me.
- Keep giving Jesus to people not by words but by example, by being in love with Jesus.
- Our first great responsibility is to be a family. We are to reveal first, to one another, something of God’s own love and concern and tenderness. When others see us, they should say, “See how they love one another.”
- Contemplation is simply to realize God’s constant presence and his tender love for us.
- To love, it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness, to have the courage of poverty.
- Even God cannot fill what is full already. We must empty ourselves so that God can fill us.
- If you do your work with joy, you can bring many souls to God. Joy is prayer, a sign of our generosity, evident in our eyes, our faces, our actions.
