Mother Theresa: No Greater Love

No Greater Love is a compilation of quotes by Mother Teresa. This book was one of the few personal items I took from my Grandmothers apartment after she passed away. Yesterday I started reading it and was really taken by the beauty of her realizations from a lifetime of completely dedicated selfless service.

Sometime back there was some controversy over her status as a genuine saint. From some of her private letters in it seem that she suffered from a protracted and extreme case of depression. I wrote a little piece on this, for those interested you can check it out here.

Reading this book completely put to rest any lingering doubts I might have had.

Here are just a few excerpts from the book that I thought everyone might appreciate.


I don’t think there is anyone who needs God’s help and grace as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think that is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength, I rely on Him twenty-four hours a day. If the day had even more hours, then I would need His help and grace during those hours as well. All of us must cling to God through Prayer.


God loves us with a tender love. That is all Jesus came to teach us: the tender love of God. “I have called you by your name and you are mine.”

The whole gospel is very simple. Do you love me? Obey my commandments. He’s twisting and turning just to get around one thing: love one another.


If we really want to conquer the world, we will not be able to do it with bombs or with other weapons of mass destruction. Let us conquer the world with our love. Let us interweave our lives with bonds of sacrifice and love, and it will be possible for us to conquer the world.

We do not need to carry our grand things in order to show a great love for God and for our neighbor. It is the intensity of love we put into our gestures that makes them into something beautiful for God.

Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another. It is often difficult for the husband to smile at his wife or for the wife to smile at her husband.

In order for love to be genuine, it has to be above all a love for our neighbor. We must love those who are nearest to us, in our own family. From there love spreads toward whoever may need us.

It is easy to love those who live far away. It is not always easy to love those who live right next to us. It is easier to offer a dish of rice to meet the hunger of a needy person than to comfort the loneliness and the anguish of someone in our own home who does not feel loved.

I want you to go and find the poor in your homes. Above all, your love has to start there. I want you to be the good news to those around you. I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor.

Do you know who your neighbor is?


Where God is, there is love; and where there is love, there always is an openness to serve. The world is hungry for God.

When we all see God in each other, we will love one another as He loves us all. That is the fulfillment of the law, to love one another. This is all Jesus came to teach us: that God loves us, and that He wants us to love one another as He loves us.

We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.



I will tell you a story. One night a man came to our house and told me, “There is a family with eight children. They have not eaten for days.”

I took some food with me and went. When I came to that family I saw the faces those little children disfigured by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger. I gave the rice to the mother. She divided it in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, I asked her, “Where did you go?” She gave me this simple answer, “To my neighbors; they are hungry also.” I was not surprised that she gave – poor people are really very generous. I was surprised she knew they were hungry. As a rule when we are suffering, we are so focused on ourselves, we have no time for others.


One thing will always secure heaven for us: acts of charity and kindness with which we have filled our lives. We will never know how much good just a simple smile can do. We tell people how kind, forgiving, and understanding God is, but are we the living proof? Can they really see this kindness, this forgiveness, this understanding alive in us?

Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised or become preoccupied at each other’s failure; rather see and find the good in each other, for each one of us is created in the image of God. Keep in mind that community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore, let us be extremely patient with each other’s faults and failures.



Not so long ago a very wealthy Hindu lady came to see me. She sat down and told me, “I would like to share your work.” In India more and more people like her are offering to help. I said, “That’s fine.” The poor woman had a weakness that she confessed to me, “I love elegant saris,” she said. Indeed she had on a very expensive sari that probably cost around eight hundred rupees. Mine only cost eight rupees. Hers cost one hundred times more.

Then I asked the Virgin Mary to help me give an adequate answer to her question of how she could share in our work. It occurred to me to say to her, “I would start with the saris. The next time you go to buy one, instead of paying eight hundred, buy one that costs five hundred. Then with the extra three hundred rupees, buy saris for the poor.” The good woman now wears one hundred rupee saris and this is because I have asked her not to buy cheaper ones. She has confessed to me that this has changed her life. She now knows what it means to share. That woman assures me that she has received more than what she has given.

I have the impression that the passion of Christ is being relived everywhere. Are we willing to share in the passion? Are we willing to share people’s sufferings, not only in poor countries but all over the world? It seems to me that this great poverty of suffering in the West is much harder to solve. When I pick up some starving person off the street and offer him a bowl of rice or a piece of bread, I can satisfy his hunger. But a person that has been beaten or feels unwanted or unloved or fearful or rejected by society experiences a kind of poverty that is much more painful and deep. The cure is much more difficult to find.

People are hungry for God. People are hungry for love. Are we aware of that? Do we know that? Do we see that? Do we have eyes to see? Quite often we look but we don’t see. We need to open our eyes and see.