January 31

Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. He gives most who gives with joy. If in your work you have difficulties accept them with joy, with a big smile. The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy.

January 30

Once we take our eyes away from ourselves, from our interests, from our own rights, privileges, ambitions - then they will become clear to see Jesus around us.

January 29

It is easy to smile at people outside your own home. It is so easy to take care of the people that you don't know well. It is difficult to be thoughtful and kind and to smile and be loving to your own in the house day after day, especially when we are tired and in a bad temper or bad mood. We all have these moments and that is the time that Christ comes to us in a distressing disguise.

January 28

We have small 'listening groups' of co-workers who go to the homes of old people and sit down with them and let them talk. Very old people love to have somebody listen to them and let them talk, even if they have to tell the story of thirty years ago. To listen, when nobody else wants to listen, is a very beautiful thing.

January 27

The very fact that God has placed a certain soul in our way is a sign that God wants us to do something for him or her. It is not chance; it has been planned by God. We are bound by conscience to help him or her.

January 26

When we have nothing to give, let us give Him that nothingness. Let us all remain as empty as possible, so that God can fill us. Even God cannot fill what is already full. God won't force Himself on us. You are filling the world with the love God has given you.

January 25

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and give him or her to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. At our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortion. These children have brought such love and joy to their adoptive parents and have grown up so full of love and joy.

January 24

Don't neglect your family. Be at home. If today so many young people are misled, it is because the grandparents are in some institution, mother is os busy that she is not there when the child comes home from school. There is nobody to receive them or play with them and they go back into the street where there are drugs and drinks and so many other things. It is the same everywhere. Everything depends on how much we love one another.

January 23

Humility always radiates the greatness and glory of God. Through humility we grow in love. Humility is the beginning of sanctity.

January 22

Nowadays, young people especially, want to see. You speak of love, you speak of prayer. They want to know how you love and how you pray, and what compassion means to you. That is how they judge. How you really live the life of a co-worker, a carrier of God's love.

January 21

Let us beg from our Lady to make our hearts 'meek and humble' like her Son's was. We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully. Do not let a chance pass you by. It is easy to be proud, harsh, moody and selfish, but we have been created for greater things. Why stoop down to things that will spoil the beauty of our hearts?

January 20

To teachers: Do not neglect the weaker children. Consider the problems of the slow-witted, the dropouts - what will they become in society, if you do not look after them? Among the poor we have the rich poor - children who are better gifted. The rich poor child can still have a place but it is the child who is so dull, stupid, hungry that I must work for.

January 19

There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.

January 18

To doctors: Have you experienced the joy of loving? You can do that as doctors. You have a beautiful opportunity when the sick come to you with great trust and confidence not only to receive a few tablets from you but to receive your tender love and care and especially when you have to make a sacrifice to look after the poor. Jesus said; 'Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me."

January 17

God dwells in us. It doesn't matter where you are as long as you are clean of heart. Clean of heart means openness, that complete freedom, that detachment that allows you to love God without hindrance, without obstacles. When sin comes into our lives that is a personal obstacle between us and God. Sin is nothing but slavery.

January 16

There are sick and crippled people who cannot do anything to share in the work. So they adopt a Sister of a Brother, who then involves the sick co-worker fully in whatever he or she does. The two become like one person, and they call each other their second self. I have a second self in Belgium, and when I was last there, she said to me, "I am sure you are going to have a heavy time, with all the walking and working and talking. I know this from the pain I have in my spine." That was just before her seventeenth operation. Each time I have something special to do, it is she behind me that gives me all the strength and courage to do it.

January 15

In Minneapolis, a woman in a wheelchair, suffering continuous convulsions from cerebral palsy asked me what people like her could do for others. I told her: You can do the most. You can do more than any of us because your suffering is united with the suffering of Christ on the Cross and it brings strength to all of us. There is a tremendous strength that is growing in the world through this continual sharing, praying together, suffering together and working together.

January 14

Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, they way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, they way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home - all this is God's love in the world today.

January 13

I believe God loves the world through us - through you and through me. We use Mother Teresa's name; it i only a name, but we are real co-workers and carriers of His love. Today God loves the world through us. Especially in times like these when people are trying to make God 'was', it is you and I, by our love, by the purity of our lives, by our compassion, who prove to the world that God 'is.'

January 12

Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really loved their homes.

January 11

Have a deep compassion for people. To be ale to have a heart full of compassion we need to pray. Especially be kind, be loving to the poor. We think we do so much for the poor, but it is they who make us rich. We are in debt to them. Do you want something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs you. This is your chance.

January 10

To students: I pray that all those young people who have graduated, do not carry just a piece of paper with them but that they carry with them love, peace and joy. That they become the sunshine of God's love to our people, the hope of eternal happiness and the burning flame of love wherever they go. That they become carriers of God's love. That they be able to give what they have received. For they have received not to keep but to share.

January 9

It is simple yet so beautiful. Is this prayer fitting me? Can I say this prayer with an open heart, with a clean heart? Everything is there: God, myself, my neighbor. If I forgive them I can pray. There are no complications and yet we complicate our lives so much, by so many additions.

January 8

How do we learn to pray? When Jesus was asked by His disciples how to pray, He did not teach them any methods or techniques. He sai that we should speak to God as to our Father, a loving Father. Let us say this prayer and live it: Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.

Exposition of the Lord's Prayer by St.Francis of Assisi

January 7

Everything starts from prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know or talk to the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray.

January 6

Sometime ago, a woman came with her child to me and said: "Mother, I went to two or three places to beg for food, for we have not eaten for three days but they told me that I was young and I should work and earn my living. No one gave me anything." I went to get some food for her and by the time I returned, the baby in her arms had died of hunger.

January 5

Charity begins today. Today somebody is suffering, today somebody is in the street, today somebody is hungry. Our work is for today, yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today to make Jesus known, loved, served, fed, clothed, sheltered. Do not wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will not have them if we do not feed them today.

January 4

It is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise there is no tru love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.

January 3

It is not enough for us to say: 'I love God.' I also have to love my neighbor. In the Scriptures, St.John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you do not love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if ou do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And he uses a very big word. 'You are a liar.' It is one of those words that is frightening to read, and yet it is really true.

January 2

Lord give me this seeing faith, then my work will never be monotonous. I will find joy in humouring the fancies and gratifying the wishes of all poor sufferers. O beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ; and what a privilege is mine to be allowed to tend you.

January 1

Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. Be holy - let us pray.