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(More customer reviews)When we come upon the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta we are accustomed to hearing about her ministry to the "poorest of the poor". Her legacy is well known to people throughout the world for her globe trotting work helping the poor in the slums of Calcutta, AIDS patients, and other unfortunate people. Much is known about her life from Skjope of the former Yugoslavia to the streets of Calcutta, but far less is known about her inner life and motivation.
From Joseph Langford's `Mother Teresa's Secret Fire' we get a revealing portrait of her interior life. Centering on an intimate encounter with God on her way to a retreat while taking the Darjeeling train on September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa received a singular message from God about "His thirst" for souls. Noting that Jesus cried out "I thirst" before dying on the cross, Mother Teresa with a singular passion and who described herself often as the "pencil of God," elaborated about that thirst being not so much for water as a thirst for our souls.
Langford also expounds on this thirst. Tying the familiar events of Mother Teresa's life, including winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he gives light to her speeches, her journals and other writings which illustrate and elaborate what this divine thirst (or longing or ardent desire) for mankind entails. But once he establishes the prime mover of her inner life, he elaborates less about her life and more about her message. Having the support of scripture and the writings of formidable saints, Langford makes the case that divine thirst has been a theme of many a mystic's writings. (Who would not be taken by their metaphorical take on thirst from Psalm 42 "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."?) Cogently, Mother Teresa's writings still convey God's message at a time when spiritual indifference and crisis seem to be coming to a climax.
Always returning to that ineffable encounter Mother Teresa had with God on the Darjeeling train, Langford manages to anchor his writing without seeming fragmented. The focus only improves during the reader's own journey which is enhanced by a meditation on the love of God and how our relationship to Him is seen as quenching Jesus's thirst when we return our love to Him. Sometimes he is too repetitive in the beginning about ideas that are sometimes hard for anyone to convey, but his clear improvement makes the sublime even more readable as the pages go on. One of the best passages comes late in the book where he reveals her written meditations about the Samaritan woman's encounter with Jesus at the well.
For its import and impact, this is clearly a five-star book, but for the presentation, I subjectively dock one star, yet I highly recommend this spiritual journey even for a few bumps along the way, which undoubtedly even Mother Teresa herself encountered on that Darjeeling train.
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Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth with the book she wanted written.The great frustration in any national crisis is the sense of impotence, the inability of the individual to make a difference. And yet, we do have power, our choices do matter. In the end, Mother Teresa showed us the power of one the power of a single person, clinging to the Creator, to handle enormous change and turn it to good, and to become a luminous force in the darkest of times. Her lessons can prepare us, as no political plan or economic program ever can, to navigate the trials that await us with grace, and even to turn them into blessing. This is true change that lasts. This is genuine recovery, from the inside out."Anyone wanting to live and love without fear will want to read Secret Fire." ----Jim Towey, former Director, White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives"Secret Fire speaks to Mother Teresa's deepest motivations." --Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Postulator, Director, Mother Teresa Center, Editor, Come, be My Light
