A WOMAN OF GOD

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32715, 18 September 1971, Page 10

A WOMAN OF GOD

Something Beautiful For God. By Malcolm Muggeridge. Collins. 246 pp and Appendix.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was bom of peasant stock in Jugoslavia in 1910. When 18 she joined the Loreto nuns and was soon teaching in a convent in Calcutta. After some years there she received what she describes as “a call within a call” and requested permission from the Pope to live outside the cloister working among the destitute and dying in Calcutta. This work she has been doing since 1948 and the congregation founded by one courageous woman has, under the name “The Missionaries of Charity,” grown and spread with astonishing rapidity. Astonishing that is until one glimpses through Malcolm Muggeridge’s book or through the television documentary about her work something of the character of this woman, of the loving concern and the Christian faith which make this work a joyful way of’life. Mr Muggeridge takes care to point out that this is not in the ordinary sense a biography (which Mother Teresa refused to allow). He first met het when he interviewed her for the 8.8. C. and was so moved by her character and conviction that he later went to Calcutta to help make a programme about her work. This book arises largely out of that film. It gives a very brief account of Mother Teresa’s life and concentrates on the work she and the Sisters do in Calcutta bringing the dying in from the streets to end their lives in dignity and peace, saving and teaching destitute children of the streets, nursing lepers and always loving Christ in each individual. Mr Muggeridge, a man not easily impressed, is clearly so. grateful for the privilege of knowing Mother Teresa that he is constantly striving for adequate expression of his feeling. Despite his obvious ability with words he writes sincerely of “the inadequacy of my effort to convey in words more than a hazy and inadequate impression of this woman of God and her coworkers.” The book contains also extracts from Mother Teresa’s devotional writings and the scripts of some of Mr Muggeridge’s conversations with her in Calcutta. Despite the author’s doubt. Mother Teresa’s Christian love shines clearly through her own and Mr Muggeridge’s words on these pages so that the book cannot but impress the reader. It is

besides, beautifully produced and generously illustrated with fine photographs, both tragic and joyful, including a vivid and haunting portrait of Mother Teresa herself.