CBB Review: The Love That Made Mother Teresa

Review by  Julie Abell

I remember the moment I heard about Mother Teresa dying. I was nursing my brand new baby, my first-born. I did not know much about her at the time and until I read this book, The Love that Made Mother Teresa I still did not know much even though she was just canonized on September 4^th.   So I picked up this book and endeavored to learn about this saint who was on this earth up until September 4, 1997, and learn I did.

What I really enjoyed about author David Scott’s book was his approach – part biography and part spiritual reading. He shows us “How her secret visions and dark nights can help you conquer the slums of your heart.” He drove home her humanity. “What sets the saints – flaws and all- apart from the rest of us is their powerful thirst for the holy, for total communion with God. They stand out because of their constant struggle to rise above the selfish limits of their human nature, to love with all their strength, to live by the grace of God alone.” And “the saints of any day and age don’t renounce the world so much as they put it in its proper perspective – as no lasting city but rather a place of pilgrimage and testing.”

I think this is a critical component to understanding Mother Teresa. Her critics do not seem to grasp that about her. She was about love, loving those who desperately needed love in their lives. Mr. Scott explains how she came to be called to her vocation of loving the poor and dying of the streets of Kolkata. He addresses how she went about doing the work of God. He explains her revolution of love. “Making converts to Jesus, however, was not her focus. Rather she tried to make converts to love.” She said herself,” We bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this reason better men -simply better- we will be satisfied. “

I could go on and on. I am immensely thankful for the opportunity to have read this book. I encourage everyone to read it because each one of us is called to be a saint, and if her critics really want to change the world then they need to look within themselves because as Mother Teresa said, “Only holiness will be able to overcome all the sufferings and miseries of people and of our lives.”

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