An Inspiring Conversation with Mother Teresa

I have been reading a book about Mother Teresa, her people and her work in the last couple of days and I read this extremely inspiring conversation between Mother Teresa and the author, Desmond Doig. It's blessed me so much that I want it does the same to you too by writing it in my blog. Hope that my time for writing all these will not be in vain...

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...When they ended their prayer, the young Sister began reading the Bible and Mother a well-thumbed copy of Seeds of the Desert by Charles de Foucauld.

'It's a very beautiful book. He was a very holy person.'

Mother explained when I asked her. She passed me the book and the paragraph I read had to do with the need to submerge completely the ego in the service of God. It was the moment I had been waiting for. Was it true, I asked her, that it was on a train journey like this that God had revealed to her His wish that she should serve Him amongst life's derelicts?

She nodded, but I knew from experience that she was loathe to talk about herself. Yet here I was sitting next to someone to whom God had personally spoken, and I wanted to know about the awesome majesty of such an experience.

So I persisted. 'Mother, how did you know? Were you not for a second in doubt? After all, Christ himself had moments of doubt. In Gethsemane.'

'No. There was no doubt. It was only for a moment that He felt unsure. That was as a human being. That was natural. The moment you accept, the moment you surrender yourself, that's the conviction. But it may death to you, eh? The conviction comes the moment you surrender yourself. Then there is no doubt. The moment Jesus said, "Father, I am at your disposal, Thy will be done", He had accepted. That was His agony. He felt all the things you and I would feel as human beings. That's why He was like unto us in all things, except sin.'

But what if uncertainty remains?

'That's the time to go on your knees, eh?'

And I wondered whether on that train journey to Darjeeling twenty-seven years ago this indomitable woman had sunk on her knees in prayer. For a while the powerful vision obliterated the race of fields and trees and piled clouds outside the windows. If God had spoken to us then I wonder if I would have been amazed.

'In that prayer,' she said, 'God cannot deceive you because that prayer comes from within you. That is the time you want Him most. Once you have got God within you, that's for life. There is no doubt. You can have other doubts, eh? But that particular one will never come again. No,' she said looking pensively out of the window so that I hardly caught the words, 'I have never had doubt.'

And then turning to me she said with intensity, 'But I am convinced that it is He and not I. That it is His work, and not my work. I am only at His disposal. Without Him I can do nothing. But even God could do nothing for someone already full. You have you be completely empty to let Him in to do what He will. That's the most beautiful part of God, eh? Being almighty, and yet forcing Himself on anyone.'

'But Mother, you surely have to use your initiative?'

'Of course. You have to do it as if everything depends on you - but leave the rest to God.'

'Mother, do you feel that everything is directed by God? Right and wrong?'

'There may be mistakes, many mistakes. We may make mistakes. But He cannot make mistakes. He will draw the good out of you. That's the beautiful part of God, eh? That He can stoop down and make you feel that He depends on you. The same thing with Our Lady?, no? When the angel was sent to her and said, 'You are to be the Mother of Jesus,' Our Lady emptied Herself and said, 'Do unto me according to Thy will. I am the handmaid of the Lord.' Until and unless She had surrendered, Christ would not have come into the world. There would have been no Christ, no Jesus, born. Because She was so humble, so empty, She became full of grace. At the moment She received Jesus, Her first thought was to give Him to others. She went in haste to John's house. And what did She do there? She did the servant's work. That's the most beautiful part of the goodness of God and the greatness of God's love for the world. God loved the world by giving Christ to the world, and Christ loved the world by giving His life for the world. Always giving,' she said, laughingly, 'constantly giving.'

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Source:
Mother Teresa: Her People and Her Work
by Desmond Doig
Harper & Row, Publishers, San Fransisco, 1976
ISBN 0-06-061941-4
(pp. 23-24)