Way Mother Teresa example essay topic

Mother Teresa's Unconditional Love The book, One Heart Full of Love, is a combination of speeches and interviews featuring Mother Teresa given during the 1970's and early 1980's. It's very obvious to me that Mother Teresa was a very simple woman. Each of the chapters in the book covers virtually the same information. The stories discussed in her speeches were all very similar. She seemed to use the same stories but add a little different twist depending on the crowd she was addressing. I really don't know if the "twist" was to keep the stories fresh in her mind or to appease a given congregation.

Nevertheless, the information she was putting out was basic, to the point, and spoken in a manner that is easily understood. Mother Teresa touched a lot of peoples lives in her time and I think this simple and basic approach helped her to accomplish this. Simple and basic is the life she chose and to help persons in need is the life commitment she made. One of the stories that Mother Teresa spoke of in her speeches touched me a little closer than others. She speaks of going out into the streets and gathering the poor, the diseased and the drunks and of bringing them in and providing food, shelter and an opportunity to get clean. Many of these people would die when they were in the care of the sisters.

One individual who was brought in stated "I have lived like an animal in the streets. I am gong to die like an angel, surrounded by love and care" (Mother Teresa, 28). This is what Mother Teresa and her cohorts did for people. No one is below them. They are there to help. There are many of life's lessons to be learned from this.

My thought process and the way I live my life is a far cry from the life led by Mother Teresa. On my way home from work everyday, I get off on an interstate off ramp. Many days, there will be a homeless person begging at the end of the ramp. They usually look poor, diseased and unclean. Exactly the way Mother Teresa describes the people she helps on a day to day basis. I never give them a dime.

I never roll down my window and say hello. I just look forward and keep on driving. I work in the Human Resource field and early in my career I had the opportunity to put a lot of homeless folks to work. I found that 90% of these individuals wouldn't work even if it was offered to them. This made me bitter and is the reason I don't help homeless people today.

So I take my hat off to Mother Teresa. I'm sure that she encountered similar people as I in her travels. And I'm sure that she was frustrated by the lack of effort of the many people she was trying to help. But this book and her speeches don't make light of that side. She constantly speaks of the good in people and of the good that people can do if given a chance.

This world needs more positive thinkers like her. She states "They (the poor) don't need our sympathy or pity. They need our love and compassion" (Mother Teresa, 22). Abortion is a subject that Mother Teresa speaks of much in this book.

She is totally against it. She believes that it is murder and that all of those unborn children deserve a chance. Another of the stories she tells involves the war in Bangladesh. She describes how the invading Pakistani troops came in and raped many of the young women in the community. According to the local laws, these women could not marry and would have to be practically thrown out of their towns. Many of these women became suicidal or insane because of the situation they had been place in.

Mother Teresa and her group took these women in, provided for them with pre-natal care and even arranged marriages for many of them. Others who were not married were helped to find caring adoptive homes for their children. If that is not love and support, I don't know what is. It's really hard for us "fat and happy" Americans to even think about a situation like this happening in our country. And if it did, how would we handle it?

Would we treat these women as outcasts or would we open our hearts and treat them as Mother Teresa did? Mother Teresa's religion was important to her. She was once asked if it was important for her to be a Catholic. Her response was "Very much so. It is most important" (Mother Teresa, 117). She was very proud of her beliefs and her belief system but she understood that her beliefs were not the only way.

She stated that "If people think and believe their church is the only way to God, that is the way in which God will come into their lives" (Mother Teresa, 118). So she understood that to know God is what is important, not necessarily how you come to know him. Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, but her work continues today. The order that she started, "The Missionaries of Charity" provides help to the poorest of the poor in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In North America, Europe and other wealthy countries, her order takes care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless and AIDS sufferers (Frangsmyr).

Bibliography

Mother Teresa. One Heart Full of Love Cincinnati, Ohio: St Anthony Messenger Press, 1984.
Frangsmyr, Tore and Abrams, Irwin. "Mother Teresa - Biography". Nobel Prize. org. 4 4 May 2004.
World Scientific Publishing Co. 15 Feb. 2005 web.