Book Review #15 – “Something Beautiful for God” by Malcolm Muggeridge (The Story of Mother Teresa)
Book Review #15 – “Something Beautiful for God” by Malcolm Muggeridge; published 1971 by Harper & Row.
“Mother Teresa is, in herself, a living conversion; it is impossible to be with her, to listen to her, to observe what she is doing and how she is doing it, without being in some degree converted. Her total dedication to Christ, her insistence that all our fellow human beings must be treated and helped and loved as though they were Christ, her simple presentation of the Gospel and joy in receiving the sacraments, is quite irresistible. There is no book I’ve ever read, or discourse I’ve ever heard, or service I’ve ever attended, no human relationship, that has brought me nearer to Christ…” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim).
Brief Bio of Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990). What a journey! From a supremely anti-establishment skeptic to joining the Roman Catholic Church at 79 years of age. From a womanizing boozer to someone rightly called St. Mugg. From a famous member of the intellectual elite to someone whose imagination and heart were captured by a nun who works in the slums of Calcutta. Yes, Muggeridge was all that and more… a complex, brilliant British journalist known for his cynicism who humbly knelt at the altar and reported that his conversion had “a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that has long been ringing and finding a place at the table that has long been vacant.” Malcolm was born in the UK into an intellectual, agnostic family, and his father did not allow the Bible to be read in the home. When a teenager Malcom had a sense that maybe there was something in the Bible to consider, so he wrapped an old Bible he found in a brown paper cover and secretly read it at night when he wouldn’t be caught. But his lifestyle did not match with his night-time reading. When at Cambridge, he was once again flirting with the Faith, but continued carousing and developing a life of what he called “debauchery.” He became a teacher in various international schools as he developed his opinionated skepticism, but he hit a snag while in India when he attempted suicide by walking out into the depths of the Indian Ocean. But he had second thoughts while wading into the deeper waters, and he was hit with the thought that life only had meaning if it had a purpose, and he returned to shore determined to discover what that purpose was in his life. By God’s grace, Malcolm late in life concluded that, “the true purpose of our existence in the world is to look for God, and in looking, to find Him, and having found Him, to love Him.” While considering the virtues of socialism in the 1930’s, he flew to Moscow to investigate the Russian system under Stalin, and since he is, if nothing else, an uncompromising seeker of the truth, Malcolm came away saying that Russia was “hell on earth,” and was “in the process of becoming a huge and centrally organized slave state.” He had developed a wide following as one of the liberal elite, and they were not happy to hear him bluntly report that, socialism was “evil and a denial of everything I care for in life.” After serving as a British secret agent during WW2, he became an intellectual celebrity as he dove into journalism, becoming a star of radio and television in the process. He was called all sorts of things… a cranky curmudgeon, an intellectual snob, a witty skeptic, an impish and hilarious contrarian, enormously civilized and urbane, and a brilliant writer. Malcolm continued to earn his notorious reputation as an acclaimed public personality with a loose moral life. But in 1969 he met a spiritual hurdle that finally stopped him in his tracks. He met Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who in his words was “luminous with the beauty of holiness.” When asked later in life if he could describe his conversion to Christ, he stated that it was more of a lifelong journey than a singular event, more of a series of happenings than one precise moment. Some of those “happenings” were no doubt his worship experience in a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, his time spent at Lourdes watching the healings that were occurring, and his epiphanies when reading such authors as Solzhenitsyn, Bonhoeffer, Simone Veil, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pascal. But his definitive happening was his time spent in Calcutta with Mother Teresa in the slums, watching her lift up dying babies from the streets and embracing them, touching the stumps of lepers and blessing them, honoring discarded fetuses left on the sidewalks, establishing her Home for the Dying in an abandoned Hindu temple, and sitting side-by-side with her at her daily 4:30 a.m. Mass. In his last book, he tries to tackle the question of conversion by saying, “What, then, is a conversion? The question is like asking ‘What is falling in love?’ There is no standard procedure, no fixed time. It is more like what William Blake once wrote… “I give you the end of a Golden String, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate Built in Jerusalem’s Wall.” One can see why during his last few years he was considered a voice in the wilderness.
Books Authored by Malcolm Muggeridge: Chronicles of Wasted Time; Jesus Rediscovered; Jesus the Man Who Lives; A Third Testament; Something Beautiful for God; The End of Christendom; Confessions of a Twentieth Century Pilgrim; Conversion.
Some Favorite Quotes of St. Mugg:
(1.) “Because of our physical hunger, we know there is bread; because of our spiritual hunger, we know there is Christ.”
(2.) “All believers are skeptics. To believe greatly, it is necessary to doubt greatly. Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”
(3.) “We are witnessing the end of Christendom, but not of Christ. Christendom is sinking, but Christ’s kingdom remains.”
(4.) “This scene of birth is, after all, still the basic one – the passing on from body to body, from soul to soul, the very essence of life, as it might be a torch in some celestial Olympiad. Already I am aware of the counter-movement – the separation of the procreative impulse from procreation, the down-grading of motherhood and the up-grading of spinsterhood, and the acceptance of sterile perversions as the equivalent of fruitful lust; finally, the grisly holocaust of millions of aborted babies, ironically in the name of quality of life. I will undergo many chances of opinion, many switches of allegiance, much ethical unrest, but in one particular I will never deviate – in upholding the sanctity and the glory of life itself.”
(5.) “So let us throw away the Ego- a great weight – and the foul-smelling appetites, all the devil’s cargo, and lo! the ship sails merrily away. Likewise the Gadarene madman is delivered from his furies, all transferred to a flock of swine who then leap furiously into the sea. The prisoner is released from his bondage to his sins; the ropes that bind him to his cupidity and carnality fall away, and he gathers into the Apostle Paul’s glorious liberty of the children of God, compared with which no other liberty has any significance or existence.”
(6.) “Yet I say to you — and I beg you to believe me–multiply all of my tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing–less than nothing, a positive impediment–measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.”
(7.) “Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. In fact, history itself consists of parables whereby God communicates in terms that the imagination rather than the mind, faith rather than knowledge, can grasp.”
(8.) “To prepare us for the ultimate enlightenment, and to encourage us meanwhile to endure our human condition, we have been accorded the great mercy of the Incarnation, which Faith enables us to see as a drama; in its totality, a full and perfect expression of all the hopes our mouths cannot utter, and all the convictions our minds cannot formulate. Confronted with the Incarnation, God is brought within the range of our understanding; God Himself becomes His own parable, which Faith, in wonder and humility, can elucidate.”
A Towering Intellect Overmatched by a Humble Nun. After a celebrated career in the intellectual elite, a famous media personality who enjoyed international fame, Malcolm Muggeridge finally met his match, and in fact was overmatched. But he wasn’t defeated through the intellect, though Mother Teresa was renowned for her astute shrewdness and native intelligence. After all, she was fluent in several languages, including Albanian, Serbian, English, Bengali, Hindi and all the various regional dialects in India. Malcolm’s intellect was outflanked by Teresa’s love. He was tongue-tied for once in his life, and had no logical response to her “beautiful holiness.” Her heart was full of the genius of Christ’s love which simply overpowered Malcolm’s defenses and dragged him into the Kingdom. He was disarmed after a lifetime of intellectual warfare, disarmed by the profound power of a simple Christ-centered nun working diligently and selflessly in the chaotic slums of the world’s poorest city. Mother Teresa spoke the truth of love to the power of the intellect, and love won hands down.
The Background to this Book about Mother Teresa. Muggeridge was intrigued by what he was hearing about the ministry of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, so he arranged to interview her in London in 1968. The film of this interview was aired on British TV and received such overwhelming interest that he then decided to travel to Calcutta and produce a full-length documentary of her life and ministry with her fellow nuns of the Missionaries of Charity among the “poorest of the poor.” Malcolm’s life was never the same as he experienced holiness in action. Teresa was resistant to the documentary at first, but finally she agreed to film everything and release it to the world. When she at first relented, she told Malcolm, “Okay, Mr. Muggeridge, now let us go and do something beautiful for God.” Malcolm thought about that and he expanded her words to include herself and her work as that “something beautiful for God.” He succeeded in producing a best-selling film documentary of his time in Calcutta and then published a book of his experience in 1971.
Brief Overview of Mother Teresa’s Life (1910-1997). She was born in Albania, Macedonia (Yugoslavia), and her birth name was Agnes. At twelve years of age felt the calling to become a nun. At 18 years old she left home to join a convent and was sent to a Roman Catholic school in Calcutta, where she taught for twenty years and became principal. In 1946 while riding on a train, she strongly felt what she called “a call within a call” to serve “the least of the least and the poorest of the poor” in the slums of Calcutta. She was then trained in nursing and moved to the poorest section of Calcutta to begin her Vatican-approved ministry. First she started a school for abandoned children from the streets with only 5 rupees (equivalent to an American nickel) with five children. Within a short time, her school had 500 students. She taught these children literacy skills, hygiene, and whatever was needed to survive and remain self-supporting. Her missionary ministry soon expanded to provide hospitals, orphanages, more schools, urgent care units, adoption services, and leper treatment centers. In 1952 she established a Home for the Dying in an abandoned Hindu temple. They wanted those who were “dying like animals on the streets” to “die like angels in their arms.” After a few short years they found that they had literally picked up over 23,000 people from the streets and sidewalks. Her Home for the Dying was the last refuge in Calcutta for those who had no hope of recovery, were rejected by local hospitals, and simply had no other options for hospice care. In Mother Teresa’s words, her mission in this “Home for the Dying”… “First of all, we want to make them feel that they are wanted, we want them to know that there are people who really love them, who really want them, at least for the few hours that they have to live, to know human and divine love; that they know that they are the children of God, and they are not forgotten, that they are loved and cared about.” As of early 2026, her Missionaries of Charity order now have 19 homes in Calcutta dedicated to various needs of the poor. But Teresa’s ministry has expanded internationally as well. The order’s 5,000 nuns operate in 140 countries, managing 760 specialized homes for the poor and forgotten, including the homeless, refugees, the disabled, abandoned children and orphans, and those with a mortal illness. Remember, this world-wide ministry started with the vision of one humble believer with a vision and literally five cents in her pocket.
Mother Teresa’s Biblical Basis for Her Ministry. She made this abundantly clear in her Constitution of the Missionaries of Charity: “All Co-Workers express their love of God through service to the poor, as Jesus Christ Himself said… ‘Whatever you did to the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me’ (Matthew 25): ‘For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was homeless and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to visit Me.” She came to base her whole calling on this particular parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Her vision was to serve Jesus “in His distressing disguise” in the poorest of the poor on the desperate streets of Calcutta, India. She sought to “satiate the thirst of Jesus by serving Him in the poorest of the poor.” Her Order, the Missionaries of Charity, literally saw God in the poor, they perceived a spiritual reality in the needy. She longed to “bring joy to the suffering heart of Jesus,” and saw the face of Jesus in the destitute and dying. To her dying breath, she held fast to the words, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” These words seemed to summarize the Gospel for her. She taught her fellow missionaries what she called “Gospel on five fingers” – You-did-it-to-me – one word for each finger. In the words of one of her biographers, she wanted her missionaries to “always remember the poor – not only to respect the dignity of the child of God in each one, but also to realize the supernatural reality of God’s presence in each of them.”
Mother Teresa as the Ultimate Pro-Life Warrior. Also written into the order’s Constitution in permanent ink is the statement, “All Co-Workers are to recognize the dignity, the individuality and the infinite value of every human life… While hearing the cries of the poor, the Co-Workers will have a special concern for those who are unwanted and unloved.” It’s only logical for Teresa to have a special burden for the unborn children killed through abortion. Here are some bold statements made by her during speeches and interviews:
(1.) “The greatest destroyer of peace and love today is abortion and the cry of the innocent unborn child. Abortion is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”
(2.) “Abortion destroys two lives… the life of the child and the conscience of the mother. Anyone who does not want a child, please give him to me. I want the child.”
(3.) “I think the little unborn child is now the poorest of the poor, the most unwanted, the most uncared for, and the most rejected.”
(4.) “To me, the nations who have legalized abortion are the poorest nations. For it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”
(5.) “Each child is created in the special image and likeness of God for greater things – to love and be loved.”
(6.) “How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love as we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.”
A Dozen Pearls of Wisdom from Mother Teresa:
(1.) “Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself.”
(2.) “Joy is the net of love by which we can catch souls.”
(3.) “Yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.” (one of her favorite verses).
(4.) “The poor deserve not just service and dedication, but also the joy that belongs to human love.”
(5.) “Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.”
(6.) “True holiness consists in doing God’s will with a smile.”
(7.) “We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.”
(8.) “In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work with the poor we find Him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ.”
(9.) “There is always the danger that we may become only social workers or just do the work for the sake of the work. Our works, though, are only an expression of our love for Christ. Our hearts need to be full of love for Him and since we have to express that love in action, naturally then the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing our love for God.”
(10.) “In all my years of work here in Calcutta, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.”
(11.) “Not all can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
(12.) “A life not lived for others is not a life.”