The test of life alone proves the genuineness of a moral virtue or a spiritual value. Virtues are tested more in difficult circumstances of life than in good fortune. It is easy to maintain poise and grace in good weather. It is only bad weather that tests their genuineness.
The calmness, poise, and grace, and the spirit of unobstructed love and self-effacing service, which Sri Sarada Devi expressed in her day-to-day life in the context of a highly distracting environment of sheer worldliness, proclaims the supremely uplifting power of godliness and spirituality. The possession of this power by a man or a woman makes him or her pure and holy. The expression of this power in life is love. Sarada Devi was the very personification of this purity, holiness, and love. This power lies embedded in the heart of every woman. An ordinary woman captures in her life only a fraction of this ideal by which she shines in her loving kindness and holiness. Out of the abundance of her heart Sarada Devi gave of her love to one and all without any distinction and, by so doing, justified the endearing epithet of 'the Holy Mother'.
The Holy Mother, hiding her extraordinary personality under the mantle of the simple and the ordinary in social and physical make-up, eludes the grasp of ordinary minds, but reveals her true form to all seekers of basic values. In her life and in her teachings she has left a balm for suffering humanity in search of light and peace.
In a beautiful Sanskrit verse composed by Swami Abhedananda, in praise of the Holy Mother, he pays this tribute:
'Whose character is all pure and whose life is similarly pure; who is the embodiment of purity divine; that shining goddess I salute again and again.'
