Blessed Mother Teresa - Woman of peace

Her Nobel Peace Prize lecture is below: 12/11/1979
Bold and inspiring!

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html

Much has been said and will continue to be written about this extraordinary women - "A pencil in the hand of God," as she described herself. The 100th anniversary of her birth is marked this August 26th and who was granted eternal life in 1997. Like most of God's very special "holy ones" her life is now recognized for what it was - for now it is. A call to charity, to non-descrimination, to absolute trust and surrender, to compassion for others because they are human and reflect the face of God, to those who are among the poorest of the poor not because they are poor but because they are not loved. To live as a contemplative in the action of the world and by that, to transform the darkness of sin into the light of heroic virtue.

In the secular world, she becomes an icon of meaning and purpose beyond what society can offer. "Vanity of vanities" in a world which pursues: wealth, sexual liberation, and freedom. In that world, she shattered the illusion that this life can supply total fulfillment and nothing more is needed.

Her life was a perpetual homily on the difference between religiosity (the appearence of being religious) and the witness of true religion (a life formed and directed by the tenets of our faith). Her words, simple but profound, provide a lesson for living that touches all:

Deliver me, O Jesus,
From the desire of being loved,
From the desire of being extolled,
From the desire to being honored,
From the desire of being praised,
From the desire of being preferred,
From the desire of being consulted,
From the desire of being approved,
From the desire of being popular,
From the fear of being humiliated,
From the fear of being despised,
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
From the fear of being calumniated,
From the fear of being forgotten,
From the fear of being wronged,
From the fear of being ridiculed,
From the fear of being suspected.
Amen.

Mother Teresa