The Key To Heaven

Take time to think

Take time to pray

Take time to laugh

It is the source of power

It is the greatest power on earth

It is the music of the soul

Take time to play

Take time to love and be loved

Take time to give

It is the secret of perpetual youth

It is God's given privilege

It is too short a day to be selfish

Take time to read

Take time to be friendly

Take time to work

It is the fountain of wisdom

It is the road to happiness

It is the price of success

Take time to do charity

It is the key to heaven

A sign on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered,
Love Them Anyway

If you are good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Do Good Anyway

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies,
Succeed Anyway

The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow,
Do Good Anyway

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable,
Be Honest and Frank Anyway

What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight,
Build Anyway

People really need help but may attack you if you help them,
Help People Anyway

Give the world the best you have and
you’ll get kicked in the teeth,
Give The World The Best You’ve Got Anyway.

From a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan,
the children’s home in Calcutta founded by
Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity

The Physical & The Spiritual

“There aren’t two worlds – the physical and the spiritual -- there is only one: God’s Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. Many of us pray, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven,’ thinking that God is up there, which creates the duality of the two worlds. A lot of people in the West like to keep matter and the spirit very comfortably and conveniently apart. All truth is one, all reality is one. As soon as we take the enfleshment of God, the incarnation which, for Christians, is represented by the person of Jesus Christ, then we start taking things seriously.” – Father Bert White

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Deliver Me

Deliver me, O Jesus,
From the desire of being loved,
From the desire of being extolled,
From the desire of being honored,
From the desire of being praised,
From the desire of being preferred,
From the desire of being consulted,
From the desire of being approved,
From the desire of being popular,
From the desire of being humiliated,
From the desire of being despised,
From the desire of being rebukes,
From the desire of being calumniated,
From the desire of being forgotten,
From the desire of being wronged,
From the desire of being ridiculed,
From the desire of being suspected.

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

A True & Fruitful Branch

Let us all become a true and fruitful branch on the vine Jesus,
by accepting Him in our lives as it pleases Him to come:

as the Truth – to be told;

as the Life – to be lived;

as the Light – to be lighted;

as the Way – to be walked;

as the Joy – to be given;

as the Peace – to be spread;

as the Sacrifice – to be offered,

in our families and with our neighborhood.

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

The Simple Path

The fruit of silence is
PRAYER

The fruit of prayer is
FAITH

The fruit of faith is
LOVE

The fruit of love is
SERVICE

The fruit of service is
PEACE

-- Mother Teresa -- A Simple Path

The Definition Of Poverty

The definition of poverty is broad in Mother Teresa’s terms. She defines “least of my brethren” as “the hungry and the lonely, not only for food but for the Word of God; the thirsty and the ignorant, not only for water but also for knowledge, peace, truth, justice, and love; the naked and the unloved, not only for clothes but also for human dignity; the unwanted, the unborn child; the racially discriminated against; the homeless and abandoned, not only for shelter made of bricks, but for a heart that understands, the covers, that loves; the sick, the dying destitutes, and the captives, not only in body but also in mind and spirit; all those who have lost all hope and faith in life, the alcoholics and drug addicts and all those who have lost God (for them God was but God is) and who have lost all hope in the power of the Spirit.

-- from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Missionary Of Charity Prayer

The following prayer is the prayer every Missionary of Charity says before leaving his or her Apostolate. It is also used as the Physician’s Prayer in Shish Bhaven, the children’s home in Calcutta:

Dear Lord, the Great Healer, I knee before You,
Since every perfect gift must come from You.
I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind,
kindness and meekness to my heart.
Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part
of the burden of my suffering fellow men, and a
true realization of the privilege that is mine.
Take from my heart all guile and worldliness,
That with the simple faith of a child, I may rely on You.

from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

The Trees of Self-Defeat And Self-Realization

The Tree Of Self-Defeat

In the branches:

Emptiness

Alienation

Apathy
Interpersonal Conflicts

Crime

Dependency

Alcoholism

Drug Addition

In the roots:

Fear

Insecurity

Resentment

Jealousy

Mistrust

Hostility

Guilt

Self-Pity

The Tree Of Self-Realization

In the branches:

Purposefulness

Health

Joy

Self-Motivation

Contentment

Acceptance

Fulfillment

Creativity

In the roots:

Charity

Friendship

Forgiveness

Love

Gratitude

Kindness

Warmth

Trust

from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Missionary Of Charity Prayer

The following prayer is the prayer every Missionary of Charity says before leaving his or her Apostolate. It is also used as the Physician’s Prayer in Shish Bhaven, the children’s home in Calcutta:

Dear Lord, the Great Healer, I knee before You,
Since every perfect gift must come from You.
I pray, give skill to my hands, clear vision to my mind,
kindness and meekness to my heart.
Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift up a part
of the burden of my suffering fellow men, and a
true realization of the privilege that is mine.
Take from my heart all guile and worldliness,
That with the simple faith of a child, I may rely on You.

from Mother Teresa – A Simple Path

Distressing Disguise

A dear friend once confided to me that she believed that, if Christ were to show up at her door, she would probably not let him in.
Would she be ready, she wondered, to have him enter her life, to wreck her prefect planning, to rearrange her priorities?
Jesus tell us "that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did whatever they pleased. So will the Son of Man suffer at their hands."
This challenge to "recognize" Jesus is clearly much more than seeing him or even acknowledging where he came from.
Rather, we need to see him, as Mother Teresa so often said, "in distressing disguise" -- in the face of a spouse, a parent, a child.
Jesus Christ is present here and now as the person who annoys me and disturbs me, who disrupts my plans and disappoints my expectations.
To be kind to him I cannot simply stand on niceties.
I have to change.
Ihave to say things that don't seem to come naturally, kind things.
I have to give something I don't seem to have to give.
I have to open the door to my heart.
During Advent each of us ought to ask for this grace:

to see that it is Christ knocking at
the door of our hearts and to let him in!

-- Lisa Lickona

Loving Father, give me the freedom to change so as to
be completely open to the presence of your Son in my life

The Last, The Lost, The Least

What if all be failure—I have no fear—if only one family—if only one little unhappy child is made happy with the love of Jesus, tell me will it not be worth all of us giving all for that? —Mother Teresa

Just as in the parable of the Good Shepherd, God seeks always the last, the lost, the least.
Who in your life needs finding and bringing back to the fold?

from Day by Day Through Advent With Mother Teresa

Think Before Speaking

When we are tempted to speak uncharitably or
to bring up someone’s past failures,
let us hear Jesus say:
Throw the stone only if you are free from sin.

-- from Thirsting for God: A Yearbook of Prayers and Meditations

Forgive and Forget

You must forgive and forget all the difficult things
of yesterday for yesterday has gone.

Tomorrow has not yet come.

But you have today to love Jesus as he loves you,
with a deep personal love.

-- from Thirsting for God: A Yearbook of Prayers and Meditations

What We See -- Judging Others

Though it is human to evaluate people we encounter based on first impressions, the conclusions we come to are seldom unaffected by our own fears and our own preconceptions.
Additionally, our judgments are frequently incomplete.
For example, wealth can seem like proof that an individual is spoiled, and poverty can be seen as a signifier of laziness-neither of which may be true.
At the heart of the tendency to categorize and criticize, we often find insecurity.
Overcoming our need to set ourselves apart from what we fear is a matter of understanding the root of judgment and then reaffirming our commitment to tolerance.

When we catch ourselves thinking or behaving judgmentally, we should ask ourselves where these judgments come from.
Traits we hope we do not possess can instigate our criticism when we see them in others because passing judgment distances us from those traits.
Once we regain our center, we can reinforce our open-mindedness by putting our feelings into words.
To acknowledge to ourselves that we have judged, and that we have identified the root of our judgments, is the first step to a path of compassion.
Recognizing that we limit our awareness by assessing others critically can make moving past our initial impressions much easier.
Judgments seldom leave room for alternate possibilities.

Mother Teresa said, "If you judge people, you don't have time to love them."
If we are quick to pass judgment on others, we forget that they, like us, are human beings.
As we seldom know what roads people have traveled before a shared encounter or why they have come into our lives, we should always give those we meet the gift of an open heart.
Doing so allows us to replace fear-based criticism with appreciation because we can then focus wholeheartedly on the spark of good that burns in all human souls.

-- DailyOM