Mercy and Compassion

forgive one another "seventy-seven times" (Matthew 18:22).

Forgiveness is the cement of any relationship... Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love. But what is there to forgive or to ask forgiveness for?

As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives.

Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally.

Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God who gives love totaly unconditional...

"Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful" (Col3:13,15)

MERCY: THE LOVE WE RECEIVE THAT WE DO NOT DESERVE

Whenever you find difficult to forgive;
Whenever you find difficult to love.

Remember, He loved us even when we were still sinners; He loved us even in all our brokeness and imperfections. Mercy: The love that we receive that we know we do not deserve...

like Him, may we learn to love those who do not deserve to be loved..., may we learn to forgive those who do not deserve forgiveness. So, whenever love and forgiveness becomes impossible, Christ reminds us: "You did it to me"

Mercy.., this is the real essence of Christianity. It goes beyond reason and Justice. It is a heart that forgets; a heart that forgives; a heart of love...

Mercy is the central nucleus of the Gospel; the center of our Christian faith; the fulfilment of God's promises...

St. Teresa of Calcutta's bold words are needed now, more than ever.

With the passage of a new Texas law outlawing abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the issue of whether a right to abortion exists under the Constitution has become the subject of intense debate.

It is fitting that we turn to the words of Mother Teresa, who once, in the presence of a U.S. president, made the case in the most compelling way possible, that abortion — the law of the land in the United States — is evil.

At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, on February 5, 1994, Mother Teresa stood before President and Mrs. Bill Clinton, and Vice President and Mrs. Al Gore, along with 4,000 others in attendance, and called abortion “murder.”

Here is what she said:

“I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

She concluded her speech with words of hope, and a reminder that we are called to use our freedom for higher purposes than murder:

“If we remember that God loves us, and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the world. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak — the unborn child — must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for. God bless you!”

Mother Teresa @ National Prayer Breakfast Mother Teresa courageously speaks—in front of pro-abortion Clinton and Gore—about the unborn and about abortion: "But I feel that the greatest destroyer of p...

SEPTEMBER 5 | Memorial
ST. MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, longing to love Jesus as He had never been loved before, you gave yourself entirely to Him, refusing Him nothing. In union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, you accepted His call to satiate His infinite thirst for love and souls and become a carrier of His love to the poorest of the poor. With loving trust and total surrender you fulfilled His will, witnessing to the joy of belonging totally to Him. You became so intimately united to Jesus your crucified Spouse that He deigned to share with you the agony of His Heart as He hung upon the Cross.

Saint Teresa, you promised to continuously bring the light of love to those on earth; pray for us that we also may long to satiate the burning thirst of Jesus by loving Him ardently, sharing in His sufferings joyfully, and serving Him wholeheartedly in our brothers and sisters, especially those most unloved and unwanted.

Amen

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Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to helping the poor. Considered one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.

A Nun and missionary Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, devoted her life to caring for the sick and poor. Born in Macedonia to parents of Albanian-descent and having taught in India for 17 years, Mother Teresa experienced her "call within a call" in 1946. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged and disabled; and a l***r colony.

In 1979, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. She died in September 1997 and was beatified in October 2003. In December 2015, Pope Francis recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her to be canonized on September 4, 2016.

Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia. The following day, she was baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

Mother Teresa’s parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, were of Albanian descent; her father was an entrepreneur who worked as a construction contractor and a trader of medicines and other goods. The Bojaxhius were a devoutly Catholic family, and Nikola was deeply involved in the local church as well as in city politics as a vocal proponent of Albanian independence.

In 1919, when Mother Teresa — then Agnes — was only eight years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died. While the cause of his death remains unknown, many have speculated that political enemies poisoned him.

In the aftermath of her father's death, Agnes became extraordinarily close to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a deep commitment to charity. Although by no means wealthy, Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city's destitute to dine with her family. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter. When Agnes asked who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded, "Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people."

On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced a second calling, the "call within a call" that would forever transform her life. She was riding in a train from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when she said Christ spoke to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of Calcutta aiding the city's poorest and sickest people.

Since Mother Teresa had taken a vow of obedience, she could not leave her convent without official permission. After nearly a year and a half of lobbying, in January 1948 she finally received approval to pursue this new calling. That August, donning the blue-and-white sari that she would wear in public for the rest of her life, she left the Loreto convent and wandered out into the city. After six months of basic medical training, she voyaged for the first time into Calcutta's slums with no more specific a goal than to aid "the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for."

Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa quickly translated her calling into concrete actions to help the city's poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated building she convinced the city government to donate to her cause. In October 1950, she won canonical recognition for a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only a handful of members—most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary's School.
As the ranks of her congregation swelled and donations poured in from around India and across the globe, the scope of Mother Teresa's charitable activities expanded exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she established a l***r colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.
In 1971, Mother Teresa traveled to New York City to open her first American-based house of charity, and in the summer of 1982, she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she crossed between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut to aid children of both faiths. In 1985, Mother Teresa returned to New York and spoke at the 40th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly. While there, she also opened Gift of Love, a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

When and How Mother Teresa Died

After several years of deteriorating health, including heart, lung and kidney problems, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87.

Mother Teresa’s Letters

In 2003, the publication of Mother Teresa’s private correspondence caused a wholesale re-evaluation of her life by revealing the crisis of faith she suffered for most of the last 50 years of her life.
In one despairing letter to a confidant, she wrote, "Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony." While such revelations are shocking considering her public image, they have also made Mother Teresa a more relatable and human figure to all those who experience doubt in their beliefs.

Mother Teresa’s Miracles and Canonization

In 2002, the Vatican recognized a miracle involving an Indian woman named Monica Besra, who said she was cured of an abdominal tumor through Mother Teresa's intercession on the one-year anniversary of her death in 1998. She was beatified (declared in heaven) as "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta" on October 19, 2003, by Pope John Paul II.

On December 17, 2015, Pope Francis issued a decree that recognized a second miracle attributed to Mother Teresa, clearing the way for her to be canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. The second miracle involved the healing of Marcilio Andrino, a Brazilian man who was diagnosed with a viral brain infection and lapsed into a coma. His wife, family and friends prayed to Mother Teresa, and when the man was brought to the operating room for emergency surgery, he woke up without pain and was cured of his symptoms, according to a statement from the Missionaries of Charity Father.

Mother Teresa was canonized as a saint on September 4, 2016, a day before the 19th anniversary of her death. Pope Francis led the canonization mass, which was held in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of Catholics and pilgrims from around the world attended the canonization to celebrate the woman who had been called “the saint of the gutters” during her lifetime because of her charitable work with the poor.

“After due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint, and we enroll her among the saints, decreeing that she is to be venerated as such by the whole church,” Pope Francis said in Latin.

The Pope spoke about Mother Teresa’s life of service in the homily. ”Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded," he said. "She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity. She made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created."

He also told the faithful to follow her example and practice compassion. “Mercy was the salt which gave flavor to her work, it was the light which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering,” he said, adding. "May she be your model of holiness."