Not How Much You Do, But How Much Love You Put In What You Do....

"It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the doing and sharing with others that is important. Try not to judge people. If you judge others then you are not giving love" .......Blessed Mother Teresa 

 Many weeks ago Puneet, one of my good old friend sent me this quote by Blessed Mother Teresa. He asked me what it meant. Such is the depth of her spirituality that to comprehensively explain her words is not going to be a very easy thing. To the world, she was a charity worker who did so much for the poorest of the poor. In reality she was much more than that. A woman committed to the call of Jesus to love ......to love God and to love creation. To love without any reservation. That takes some effort.
            We live in a world, where we are measured by how much we do. We are obsessed by size. Quantum takes precedence over everything else. It's the scale that matters. Corporates want to be bigger, larger and more powerful than the previous year. Some might ask at what cost is this so called power acquired, esp the human cost. But no one actually bothers to look into that. Regular people like you and me look forward to acquire bigger houses, bigger cars every few years. Similarly, parents are ready to shell out any amount to cater to every whim and fancy of their children so that they can be at the top of their peer group. It becomes a matter of pride for parents to ensure that the children have 'more & better' than their friends. The quality time spent to impart values is secondary, may be not even that. We can go on with such examples but in all this, the one crucial factor, which actually is the ultimate measuring criteria is if there is love behind that action. Mother was clearly following the teachings of St Paul (1st letter to Corinthians 13:1-7). Love is the final measure, the ultimate yardstick of all that we do. After all love conquers all things. Most beautiful and yet most difficult to implement.
                Blessed Teressa goes on to say that loving and judging cannot go together. The most pertinent of example being Jesus on the cross. If Jesus had judged us, He wouldn't have chosen to be crucified for our sins but because He loved us immeasurably & unconditionally, there was no condemnation or judgment and He freely chose the cross out of nothing but love. The same applies to us also, we cannot claim to love, if we judge and if we judge, we simply cannot love.  They both are mutually exclusive and do not go together. Plain & simple as it gets.