Mother Teresa

Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

Perhaps in the history of salvation there was no body more involved in caring the poorest of the poor, the lamest of the lame and the most crippled of the crippled than Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. However, if one was attentive to this week’s headlines regarding her mission, it seemed as if journalists were gleefully reporting the following leads:

“Mother Teresa questioned God and Faith; Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith and worst of all: Was Mother Teresa an Atheist.” And while the secular world and media was celebrating the 10 th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death with accolades and fresh outpourings of mourning and loss, the 10 year anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa was held seemingly in silent contempt.

There is nothing more threatening to the world than a Saint, especially one who is the living embodiment of the Gospel as Mother Teresa had been and her Sisters continue to be. Many find it safer to celebrate the life of a Princess Diana and feel more comfortable mourning her passing than a Mother Teresa.

For Princess Diana represents what the world holds most dear: power, privilege, money, forbidden loves, prestige, and an illusory story book life of Royal patronage unparalleled in history. What a far cry from the demands of the Gospel and the challenge of the Cross.

One of the great Saints of the 20 th century had doubts, at times she even doubted the existence of God…so let’s imagine that for a moment. Putting her life and mission in proper perspective, imagine that for 60 years you and I waded elbow deep in the gutters of Calcutta, tending to the outcast, the horribly disfigured and diseased, the dying:

From the tiniest infant, to the orphaned child, to the skeletal teenager, to the loneliest of the elderly. In the midst of such unspeakable filth and human suffering, might you or I at times not doubt God, who do so for far less reasons?

And further trying to sensationalize Mother Teresa, which is nothing more than a disguised attack on Christ, it is reported that she battled depression. Again, assuming the proper perspective, when you wrestle with the devil surrounded by human misery, how can one not feel overwhelmed by depression or discouragement?

Mother Teresa was up to her eye balls in a culture that worshipped many false gods, demons if you will, that permeated the atmosphere of Calcutta like a poisonous fog, whose spiritual toxins were inhaled with each breath. If there was anyone who the devil would unleash his fury upon and whose steps he would dog to her very last breath with temptations to despair:

It would have been Mother Teresa. So fierce was her battle with evil and Satan that towards the end of her life she allowed an exorcism to be performed on her…so real had the infection become.

But is that not the reality of discipleship. Does any boxer or athlete enter into the arena of competition and not expect some punishment, the risk of some injury or pain? Christ left the eternal glory of Heaven where He enjoyed the infinite perfection of purity, beauty, and innocence and entered into our human condition…into all our misery, sinfulness and suffering and wound up beaten beyond recognition upon the rack of the Cross.

It makes perfect sense than that Mother Teresa at times would wonder: “Where is God?” To be depressed in such situations simply makes you human. To carry on through and despite that depression reveals the hand of God…the power and triumph of the Cross.

Such dogged perseverance has nothing to do with pig headedness…such heroic persistence is not natural but supernatural. To help the poorest of the poor die with dignity is the greatest example and proof of faith, more so while you are suffering unimaginably yourself, pestered by doubts and pain.

It is impossible for the world and even for us to understand such concepts because we too often make decisions in life based on how we feel. If feelings were the only accurate gauge of how we should live our lives, than Mother Teresa would have gone no further than the first person she encountered in the gutter of Calcutta.

Imagine her initial feelings of repugnance when that first person, covered from head to foot in infection, having not been washed in years, fell into her arms and looked up into her eyes.

If feelings were all Mother Teresa was to go upon, her mission would have concluded that day and there would be no Sisters carrying her torch of Christ like love and sacrifice to the entire world…our own Bridgeport included. And yet we suffer terribly under the delusion that unless it feels good or unless you feel happy then do it…and so relationship after relationship continues to be destroyed and people reject their faith because the feelings of happiness are absent.

But what coal miner wants to lower himself into the bowels of the earth, where the stench of death is felt in each inhalation of air…does he do so because he feels like it or because he chooses to, because that is where the paycheck is that allows him to feed his family and send his children to school.

Joy like faith is not a feeling but a choice, and one that Mother Teresa made each day for 60 years until her last breath. Why? As she wrote to her spiritual advisor, she submitted to God.

“I accept,” she wrote, “not in my feelings…but with my will, the Will of God…I accept His will.” And is this not the attitude of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane where He had to confront and absorb the pain and squalor of all the gutters of all the world of all of human history:

“Father if it is possible let this Chalice of suffering pass from my lips…but not as I will, but Your will be done.” And Christ drained the dregs of human suffering and sin to the very last drop.” Despite His feelings of repugnance and fear, Christ chose us…He chose love…and that choice of love was and is His Joy.

There was no more joy filled person in history than Christ suffering upon the Cross and Our Lady beneath that Cross, because in choosing that Cross, Christ chose our salvation…our never ending peace and joy with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mother Teresa met the beaten figure of Jesus Christ in each person and child she held in her arms.

For Christ, the power of His Love and Cross is no where more present than in suffering humanity. If one wants to experience the fullest expression of God’s love, one will find it at Calvary…its name may change… Calcutta, Bridgeport Hospital, Saint Joseph’s Manor, whatever house on whatever road in any town or village…the presence of Christ and His redeeming love is still the same.

The life of Mother Teresa reminds us, not that the Saints were people just like us, rather, we are people who need to be just like the Saints. And while this passing world desperately tries to eliminate the inspiration and influence of Holy Mother Church, especially in figures like Mother Teresa, she has as last assumed her place at the banquet table in Heaven…where her joy will not last for 60 years or even a 100, but will only increase forever.

And imagine the hundreds and thousands of people whom she helped in this world having met her at the Pearly gates and so many more who she will then meet. For as Christ continues His life and love in His Body the Church, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta continues to perform her mission in each of her Sisters throughout the world. God adding grace upon grace to her glory in Heaven, because the effects of her heroic Gospel love continues. What a great legacy to aim for.