Love. Love. Love. So needed and yet so stifled
“A father and mother — by loving their children, by loving one another, they are loving God.”
“The family that prays together, stays together. But more and more we see that families are not staying together, and this is the greatest destroyer of peace in the world.”
“If there is so much disturbance in the world today, if there is so much sadness, so much killing and anxiety, it is because the family is no longer united. . . . Father against mother, children against children, . . . a mother committing a murder in her own womb.”
“If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop others from killing one another?”
Well, I guess those are fighting words today. They are from 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner and canonized saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She was recently subject to the New York Times headline “Was Mother Teresa a Cult Leader?”
. . .
Religious community life, such as the Missionaries of Charity live, requires obedience. That’s an extreme humility to modern ears, but it also makes room for tremendous charity, something we could also use more of, as we so often do, maybe especially after these pandemic days, when we are talking about inflation. There is a beauty to religious community life that is foreign to us. But perhaps instead of attacking, we might see what we can learn from the likes of the Missionaries of Charity, or my beloved New York–founded friends, the Sisters of Life, and others.
Let’s Learn from Mother Teresa, Not Attack Her
Jesus, I trust in You!