Faith Filled Friday: The Vine and the Branches

One last entry on Mother Teresa’s Heart of Joy.  The thesis of this little passage has probably been said, but I wanted to highlight this because I think it's the best written passage in the entire book.  It has me wondering if she wrote it herself or if someone edited it for her.  The balanced sentence and the parallel structure is absolutely exquisite.  Great writing sparks me as much as what's being said.  This passage is a rhetorical joy!

The Vine and the Branches

Let us be like a genuine and fruitful branch of the vine, which is Christ, accepting him in our lives the way he gives himself to us: as truth, which must be spoken; as life, which must be lived; as light, which must shine out; as love, which must be loved; as a way, which must be trodden; as joy, which must be communicated; as peace, which must be radiated; as sacrifice, which must be offered to our families, to our closest neighbors, and to those who live far away.

I haven't done this yet, but I think a good spiritual exercise would be take each clause in the parallelisms and meditate over them individually.  

There was one anecdote that I thought was hilarious which seemed someout of place.  But it's worth the smile to quote it here.

Unexpected Details

Jesus has unexpected details sometimes.  

Once, in London, I received a telephone call from the police: "Mother Teresa, there is a woman in the street, reeking of alcohol, who is asking for you."  We went to pick her up.

As we were coming back she said, "Mother Teresa, Christ changes water into wine in order to give us to drink."  She was, indeed, very drunk.

That was it!  I guess it was an unexpected detail from Jesus.  I bet Mother was a very funny lady.  

Finally I might as well provide my book review I posted at Goodreads. 

Heart of Joy is a collection of Mother Teresa’s speeches, talks to her religious sisters, and one published article all taken from the mid 1970s. The fact that most of the speeches are so close together in time creates some repetition. I doubt Mother Teresa had a book in mind when she made the speeches, but nonetheless this is an engaging read, a spiritually satisfying read, and an insightful read.

One of the more interesting themes of the book is how the future saint expands the definition of poverty. As people know, Mother was famous and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her care and attention to “the poorest of the poor.” Now the poorest of the poor in 1970’s India must be way beyond my experience of poverty, where mass numbers of people are homeless, starving, and deathly ill, all abandoned to the gutters. Her efforts which are linked to her seeing the Christ in all individuals are inspiring, but her expanded notion of poverty is striking to the core because it addresses the poverty that is not linked to material possessions. The poverty she identifies is a poverty of values in well off nations. Neglect of the elderly, the decision to abort a child, the abandonment of family, the insensitivity to others, these are a poverty just as debilitating as a poverty of material.

Most of the speeches appear to be extemporaneous and reflect that Mother Teresa is more of a doer than a systematic thinker. The sections where she address her sisters seem to collect aphorisms, precepts, and axioms from the future saint, presented in random order which has the effect of a collage. While no single piece of a collage creates a portrait, the sum total of the collage draws a portrait of the future saint through her thoughts and values. We see what makes her tick: her devotion to the poor, her tireless and ceaseless work, her merging with Christ and seeing Christ in the suffering. We see how she puts her faith into action. The central point of her message, if I may draw that conclusion, is by this quote: “Do not turn your back on the poor because the poor are Christ,” and as I’ve said the poor are more than those that lack means.

I enjoyed this book. The sections with anecdotes and aphorisms serve as good devotional reading. I gave the rating a three because the book is kind of slim and at times repetitive. But if you want a short read on understanding what motivates Mother Teresa and an unfiltered portrait through her own words and thoughts, this is a fine book.

With that ends Heart of Joy and next up for the Catholic Thought book club is Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo.  If you’ve ever want to read that, come and join the book club.  

Faith Filled Friday: The Oil and the Lamp

Here is another excellent passage from Heart of Joy by Mother Teresa.  This comes from a section of a collection of her statements to her daughters in the Order.  This is one particular statement, titled in the book as “The Oil and the Lamp.”

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary.  What we need is to love without getting tired.

How does a lamp burn?  Through the continuous input of small drops of oil.  If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Mt 25:1-13). 

My daughters, what are these drops of oil in our lamps?  They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, punctuality, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting.  These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a lively flame.

Do not look for Jesus away from yourselves.  He is not out there; he is in you.  Keep your lamp burning, and you will recognize him.

The Biblical passage alluded to is the parable of the ten virgins, half who have run out of oil for their lamps and cannot meet the bridegroom.  What I find remarkable here is that Mother Teresa considers the oil that burns the lamp to be our little efforts of love and faith.  Those efforts are little drops of oil into the lamp.  And therefore it’s what brings light to the dark places of life.  I would read this passage to coincide with her order’s purpose, which she quotes a few pages later: “A Missionary of Charity is a messenger of God’s love, a living lamp that offers its light to all, and the salt of the earth.  We are to take Christ to those places where he has not been taken yet.”

Faith Filled Friday: Mother Teresa on the Poverty of Abortion

We at the Catholic Thought book club at Goodreads are reading Heart of Joy: The Transforming Power of Self-Giving by Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta.  he book is mostly a collection of her speeches and writing, at least so far, and I’m about a third of the way in.  The book doesn’t lend itself to analysis, so I’m just going to occasionally post a quote, and as you would imagine her quotes fit very nicely to my “Faith Filled Friday” meme. 

I think this is a particularly poignant quote because Mother Teresa is known for aiding the “poorest of the poor.” 

A nation that destroys the life of an unborn child, who has been created for living and loving, who has been created in the image of God, is in a tremendous poverty.  For a child to be destroyed because of the selfishness of those who fear they may not be able to feed one more child, fear they may not be able to educate one more child and so decide the child has to die—that’s poverty.

What makes this quote particularly poignant is that she’s speaking in Philadelphia in the United States (August 6, 1976) at a symposium titled “Freedom and Justice.”  In effect she is speaking to the United States and to other first world, western nations—the richest countries in the world.  The poverty is not a poverty of money, but a poverty of values.  And frankly it’s even worse than Mother Teresa imagines.  Underlying her assumption in the quote is that most abortions happen because of money.  But really they don’t.  They happen because people don’t want the child to interfere with their lives and plans.  That is truly a poverty of values.

By the way, always looking for some new members to the Catholic Thought Book Club.

Lines I Wished I’d Written: The Simple Path by St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta [UPDATED}

Unless you live in a bubble, you have probably seen that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was canonized into a saint this week.  I just came across a wonderful quote from our saintly lady, and that was something she wrote in her book, A Simple Path.  I have not read the book, but when I perused it in the Amazon sample, it was there.  These lines designate the simple path, the path to spiritual wholeness.

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.

            - St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Now I was tempted to make this a “Notable Quote” entry, but on looking over the craft in the rhetoric, I’m in awe, so I made this both “Notable Quote” and “Lines I Wished I’d Written” entries.  First off, each sentence is simple, held together by a to be form linking verb.  This sentence form creates an equation: “The figurine is a dog.”  The simplicity of the sentences accentuates the message of simplicity she is projecting.

What is interesting here is that each sentence follows a repetitive pattern.  Each sentence starts with “The fruit of…”  Such a repetition of sentence structure is called in rhetoric anaphora.  The subject of each sentence is “fruit” but in each case it is modified my an adjective phrase, “of xxx.”  Each sentence ends with a noun complement.  So each sentence sets up an equation of fruit equating to a powerful noun, which is rhetorically what she wants you to come away with: prayer, faith, love, service, peace. 

But the noun complement of the preceding sentence becomes the noun in the adjectival phrase, so that there is a linking progression from one sentence to the next.  What is most interesting to me is how the anaphora makes the sequence so much more powerful.  Mother Teresa could have just had a sequence of even simpler sentences: “Silence is prayer.  Prayer is faith.  Faith is love.  Love is service.  Service is peace.”  That version would have been static.  Adding the anaphoric subject, “The fruit” creates a dynamic and movement that would otherwise be lacking.  The “fruit” is the outgrowth of the noun complement, a development which implies time and motion.  It implies a path, a simple path.  That is so much more powerful.

St. Mother Teresa, pray for us.

Updated: 9 September 2016, 9:28 AM:
It occurred to me yesterday that I missed one of the most important elements to that prose poem, the loaded meaning on the word "fruit."  A word is "loaded" when because of its context, associations, or connotations carries more meaning than the dictionary definition.  Mother Teresa here did not choose the word "fruit" haphazardly.  From the Hail Mary is the line, "blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus."  The association with "fruit" in the Hail Mary expands the meaning of the word "fruit" in Mother Teresa'a prose poem.  Each noun complement is almost a birthing output out of the womb, and each is associated with Jesus!  I realized all that while praying the Hail Mary the next morning after I posted this.