Preaching by Charity: Msgr. Leo Maasburg on the life of Mother Teresa | Michael J. Miller | Catholic World Report
Msgr. Leo Maasburg is national director of the Pontifical Missionary Work in Austria. For several years after his ordination in 
1982 he accompanied Mother Teresa of Calcutta on many journeys to destinations ranging from Moscow to New York. He was interviewed in German for Catholic World Report in late August. The English edition of his book Mother Teresa of Calcutta: A Personal Portrait, was released by Ignatius Press in September.
Who introduced you to Mother Teresa of Calcutta? How did you become a collaborator in the apostolate of her Missionaries of Charity?
Msgr. Maasburg: A Slovak bishop who had been friends with Mother Teresa since the World Eucharistic Congress in Bombay (now Mumbai) introduced me to the Blessed. During one of my first visits, Mother Teresa wanted to know whether I owned an automobile and, since I did have one, she immediately assigned me my first “job.” After she had become better acquainted with me in this way—and I with her sisters—she asked me (at that time still a newly ordained priest) to conduct a week of spiritual exercises for her sisters. Astonished and terrified, I asked what I should talk about. The answer came promptly: “About Jesus, of course—what else?”
What did you learn about missionary work by visiting Mother Teresa’s communities in India?
Msgr. Maasburg: During the years when I was privileged to accompany Blessed Teresa on many journeys, I was studying missiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. It was very interesting to study theory in Rome, the center of the Church, and to experience the practice more or less at the same time in a wide variety of mission territories. I think that despite all the differences between the theoretical and the practical approach, the goal was the same: to teach and to show Jesus, who is love, to believe in him and to live out that love.
What completely captivates me, now as then, is the close connection between the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and his presence in his “distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor,” as Mother Teresa used to say. Blessed Teresa clearly showed her sisters and us helpers that the most fully developed and most profound way to preach the Gospel is to love the poorest. Regardless of religion, skin color, or ideology, love is the only preaching that is understood worldwide by all people of good will.
Tell us something about your travels with Mother Teresa to the New World.
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