Meg Greene, “Mother Teresa: A Biography”
Writing about Mother Teresa can be both a frustrating and challengingexercise. On the surface, she appears almost one-dimensional, living asimple life devoted to her calling and her faith. Closer inspection, however,reveals a personality so rife with contradictions that it is difficult toexplain her motives and purposes. What is the reality? What finally can abiographer conclude about the life of Mother Teresa?In many ways, Mother Teresa defies the biographer’s art. Her life is notinteresting. There are, or seem to be, no great adventures, no great crises,no great sorrows, no great turning points. Most biographies of her are soreverential and so one-dimensional, that it is easy to forget that she was ahuman being and did not from birth belong to the ages. Even a list of hernumerous accomplishments and awards does little to capture her innerlife. She did not appear to suffer from the terrible internal conflicts, hardships,or adversities that often mark a great and memorable life. Rather,her life was mundane and ordinary, and she never pretended it to be otherwise.Perhaps, though, her very ordinariness provides a starting point forthe biographer. How did this unexceptional woman captivate and consoleso many that she has come to take her place among the monumental personalitiesof the age?
Mother Teresa, however, was something of an artful dodger. Whenasked about most any topic, but especially herself, she uttered platitudesand pieties that sounded almost meaningless. She concealed herself behindthem. Yet, coming from her, these expressions had a ring of truth.That may be because the story of Mother Teresa is not the story of a greatlife in the modern sense. Mother Teresa was not a celebrity. On the con-trary,hers was a life lived on a different principle. She devoted herself toan old-fashioned sense of calling. She worked among the poor of Calcuttabecause she believed it is what God required of her. She would have donethe same work in anonymity if she herself had lived and died in obscurity.It is that devotion that makes the life of Mother Teresa so interesting.
Greenwood Press (2004) English ISBN 0313327718 174 pages PDF 1.08 MB
Download link:
“Mother Teresa: A Biography”
