Mother Teresa on Belief

'What we allow God to use us for, that is important. What He is doign through us, that is important. Because we are religious and our vocation is not to work for the lepers or the dying, our vocation is to belong to Jesus. Because I belong to Him, the work is a means for me to put my love for Him into action. So it is not an end, it is a means. Because my vocation is to belong to God properly, love Him with undivided love and chastity, I take the vows.'

'I see Christ in every person I touch because He has said, "I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, I was sick, I was suffering, I was homeless and you took me..." It is as simple as that. Every time I give a piece of bread, I give it to Him. That is why we must find a hungry one, and a naked one. That is why we are totally bound to the poor.'

'The vows we take make our religious life. Our vow of chastity is nothing but our undivided love for Christ in chastity, then we proceed to the freedom of poverty - poverty is nothing but freedom. And that total surrender is obedience. If I belong to God, if I belong to Christ, then He must be able to use me. That is obedience. Then we give whole-hearted service to the poor. That is service. They complete each other. That is our life.'

'If you really belong to the work that has been entrusted to you, then you must do it with your whole heart. And you can bring salvation only by being honest and by really working with God. It is not how much we are doing but ho much love, how much honesty, how much faith, is put into doing it. It makes no difference what we are doing. What you are doing, I cannot do, and what I am doing, you cannot do. But all of us are doing what God has given us to do. Only sometimes we forget and we spend more time looking at somebody else and wishing we were doing something else.'

'We waste out time thinking of tomorrow and today we let the day pass and yesterday is gone.'

Source:
Mother Teresa: Her People and Her Work
by Desmond Doig
Harper & Row, Publishers, San Fransisco, 1976
ISBN 0-06-061941-4
(pp. 158-159)