While I am not Catholic, Mother Theresa, who once visited the US Capitol when I was present, is a model of what selfless love looks like. In the Catholic church, she was made a Saint this month, 23 years ago. Her words are uplifting, hopeful, timeless.
Looking around, we know certain truths. Among them, we are experiencing a loss of historical perspective, loss of facts, critical thinking, and moral compass. These realities defined Mother Theresa, and, for that matter, America at our best.
These days, words are often redefined on a whim – or to justify some new ideology – people content to throw out history, culture, faith, the meaning of freedom, self-reliance, sacrifice, hard work, limited government, law and love.
Mother Theresa was both a realist and idealist. Of slight build and soft-spoken, she was of enormous stature and gave us guideposts to live by. She was not part of our nation or founding generation, nor among those we admire for defending timeless values.
Still, her views are thought-and-heart-provoking, cross-cultural, and move easily from India – filled with poverty – to America, fortunate to the sky yet forgetting why.
Coincidentally, in my youth, I worked in rural India – not in Calcutta, but in forgotten parts of Andhra Pradesh, central India. I worked with the “least of the least,” what some call “Untouchables,” others “Harijans” (meaning “Children of God”). My time was months, not years, but it reminded me how fortunate we Americans are.
Mother Theresa, toward the end of her life, wrote on topics worth hearing anew, none more so than society – especially leaders – embracing love as a motivator.
She speaks simply to ideas we can all embrace, like waking with a mindset to get things done, to make a difference in others’ lives. “Not all of us can do great things; but we can do small things with great love.” If this conviction centers us, we should then work to “let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”
She counseled against distraction; acknowledging laws and life, she urged love as a motivation for action. “If you judge people, you have no time to love them,” and so “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service to others.”
Reading her thoughts, you get the sense she saw society as increasingly alienating, less caring, less interested in the individual, too much about ideology and things that do not matter. The result was easy to see. There is a “hunger for love…much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
For her, “the greatest disease is not tuberculosis but … the feeling of being unwanted.” Looking around Maine, and across America – especially after the COVID fiasco – one senses that she was seeing the future.
If true 20 years ago, it is true today. To those in power, who measure themselves by titles, positions, words and wishes, she had counsel. “Love cannot remain by itself — it has no meaning; love has to be put into action, and that action is service.”
For those not in power, she offered similar guidance. “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person” – because “a life not lived for others is not a life.” Finally, get up and be part of the solution, in the spirit of problem solving.
She would surely decry today’s loss of conversation, sharing common humanity, if not also faith, a sense that we can all model gratitude by doing, not griping.
We do not know what she would say about the demise of conversation, a modern tragedy for our republic and the world, our default to our corners, thinking we win by pointing with vilification, but we do know what she said when she walked among us. “Peace begins with a smile,” so “meet each other with a smile… a smile is the beginning of love.”
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What does this stir in you?