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All for the Poor
Burrows met in India. Later that day, the two leaders shared a time of prayer together.
“… the first and most basic reason why Mother Teresa helped the poor was because they are flesh and blood like ourselves, members of the whole family of God who are suffering, and need help. And she gave that help in a Christlike fashion. That was her calling. A fact which those who criticize her for not proactively campaigning for social justice against government apathy have not understood.”
–General Eva Burrows (R)
“Salvationists around the world join with millions of their sisters and brothers in Christ in mourning the loss and saluting the memory of Mother Teresa of Calcutta,” said General Paul Rader, in a tribute to the “saint of the gutters,” as she was known in India.
“With them we give thanks to God for the inspiration of her legacy of love for Christ and the poorest of the poor. In the diseased, despairing and dying, she saw her beloved Lord in his ‘most distressing disguise.’ In embracing them in their suffering, she poured out her love to Jesus.
Choosing to live in the slums among the poor, she companioned the powerless to dignity and hope. In her very weakness she became one of the world’s most powerful women. What was her secret? ‘The most important thing in my life, she said, ‘has been my encounter with Christ. He is my support.’ Her sacrificial service flowed from her inner life of devotion to Jesus. ‘Be only all for Jesus!’ she admonished us. ‘The fruit of prayer is a deepening of faith. And the fruit of faith is love. And the fruit of love is service.’
“She found unbounded joy in that service amid the direst miseries of the world. ‘Joy is a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving,’ she said. And upon her simple sari of the order she founded, she wore with grace that mantle of joy–a garment of exquisite and enduring beauty.
“We best honor her memory by determining to love as she loved and to serve as she served, ‘only, all for Jesus’.”
Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Macedonia to Albanian parents. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 and devoted her life to serving the world’s needy.