We were blessed to be able to visit an exhibit of Mother Theresa recently. A friend of mine told me about the exhibit when I met her at church. It was being organized by the Sisters of Charity and the sister who came with the exhibit was my friend's classmate.
Even though I thought it was a great idea to go to this exhibit I totally forgot about it. But my smart husband had added the date and time to his phone calendar and that Saturday morning the reminder came up on his phone. It so happened that we did not have anything going on that evening and so we drove to this beautiful church named after Elizabeth Ann Seton where the exhibit was taking place.
The exhibit was very simple with a bunch of screens with her pictures and her story from birth all the way till she died. I was not able to read through every single one of them due to Anna running around, yet the few I got to read and the pictures I got to see made a huge impact in my life. Her simplicity and her love for the poor really inspired me. It said in the writings how Mother Teresa's mother played a very important role in building up her faith with the prayer time they had together as a family and teaching her to forgive and love her enemies. She left home at the age of 18 and never saw her family again.
After she received the message from Jesus to work for the poor it took another two years before she got permission to pursue this plan. Even after being fully sure about God's plan to do this mission work she totally submitted herself to obedience until she was given permission. This reminded me about the many times we are stopped by our husbands, parents, in-laws, even children etc from doing several things which are important and correct in our eyes. Do we submit ourselves to obedience during these times? Mother Teresa is an example like the many other saints in being completely obedient to the Will of God. It could be anything from buying a house, to homeschooling your children and there are lot of obstacles that come our way. It takes great faith and trust in the Lord to be able to completely surrender that intention into the hands of God and wait.
How can we receive this kind of a thirst for souls? To leave everything behind to win souls for Christ. We can start this right here at our home with our children, our husband, family members and anyone God brings into our lives. It is not easy to stay home all day leaving all our desires aside to spend time with children catering to their needs and your husbands. But if can do that without words of complains and willfully accept the unjust sufferings I think we can easily win souls not just our own children but many others whom we can pray for by offering up our sufferings willingly.
The following pictures just brings a lot of joy into my heart not because they are my own children but by seeing the love and innocence that is being shown on their faces which resembles the love of Jesus himself. This pictures reminds me about how Jesus told the disciples, "let the children come to me". The lord asks us to be like children in our attitudes of loving and forgiving one another.
My friend was telling me about this sister's (her friend's) lifestyle. They are given three pairs of everything (clothes, socks, underwear etc). They are to wash it almost everyday so that they have clean clothes for their everyday use. They don't take donations but go through houses and beg for money following the steps of Mother Teresa. They can have a phone call with their family members for 15 minutes once a month. That is their only contact with their loved ones. So they basically embrace Christ and poverty, leaving everything behind.
How many pairs of clothes we have and how much more we keep buying for ourselves and our children. Nothing is enough these days. Our houses are filled with things and we hardly think of how minimum we really need to live a normal life. Let us ask the Lord to help us embrace poverty and live a simple life with minimum things. After this exhibit I always think twice before I plan to buy anything.
