Random Thoughts + Quotes from Mother Teresa

Things to do over time:
-Advance my Italian and learn Latin to understand Pope Benedict XVI's speeches and Church documents (all the rich history of over 2000 years, and I can't even read the original source?)
-Plan my dad's 60th in the next few years :P
-Stop being lazy and wasting time
-Love more

I see Mother Teresa as one of our modern models to live a virtuous and fully Catholic life. Some of her photos floating around the Internet beautifully capture her charity and love. Here are some of her quotes and my reflections:

-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.
(We are all called to be saints, to be holy, so let us fervently move towards this, every day.)

-Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

-If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
(the way I think of it, you judge people based on their appearance, past history (promiscuous? criminal? if they amended their ways, who cares?), smell, gossip or whatnot, but we shouldn't be doing that! We must leave our preconceived notions of people at the door to really love them)

-Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
(if you do well with the little that is given to you, you will do well with much)

-Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person.

-Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
(Pope Benedict also mentions how isolation is the greatest form of poverty in today's world in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate; what can we do to care for them? little things...smile at them, pray for them and those you don't know, even just seeing them sleeping on the street or carry around some granola bars with you and leave it by their head :). There was an incident a few years ago when I first moved to SF, where this seemingly crazy bag-type lady came up to me in the mall eyeing my haggen dazs ice cream cone. I just gave her the cone I was eating, but looking back, I really wish that I had bought her a new cone with her favorite flavors instead. Imagine the increased joy that might have given her. I hope it's not vain to get a total kick out of making people smile, laugh and feel good about themselves by patting myself on the back every time I succeed)

-Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

-Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

-Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
(I try to do this every day and with every human interaction)

-The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.

-We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
(I adore my quiet time, especially when in nature wandering about or hiking)

-Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
(Sometimes, we give, and it may hurt because we don't get anything back (ie affection, love, praise, care, etc.), but that's because we have expectations for something more, and therefore take account/measure of what we give...however that is a love centered on ourselves, not on others and God)