SAINT (MOTHER) TERESA OF CALCUTTA

FEAST DAY SEPTEMBER 5

 INTRODUCTION

Saints are models for us. The saints are not only models for us, they are intercessors on our behalf.  Mother Teresa is one of my favorite saints.  Years ago she inspired our whole family, teenage girls included, to spend time in the poorest of poor nations, Haiti, to work with the poor and dying.  One of the places was a hospice run by the Missionaries of Charity the order Mother Teresa founded.

We have never been the same since. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25 It is true when you give your life for another, you save your life and that life becomes more abundant.  God keeps His promises.

BACKGROUND

 Born in Skopje (North Macedonia) in 1910, MOTHER TERESA joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin in 1928 and was sent to India, where she began her novitiate. She taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta from 1931 to 1948, until leaving the Loreto order to begin the Missionaries of Charity.

In 1946, Mother Teresa had a mystical encounter with Christ on a train to Darjeeling September 26, 1946 in which He asked her to take her love for Him a large step further. He asked her to leave the convent of Loreto and begin an order which would serve the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.

During the time of her mystical experiences leading to the founding of the new order, she experienced deep spiritual union and the sensible awareness of God’s Presence in her life.

Here is a small sample of Jesus’ words to her: “My little one – come – carry Me into the holes of the poor. –  Come be My light – I cannot go alone – they don’t know Me – in your love for Me – they will see Me, know Me, want Me…. For them I long –Wilt thou refuse?”

During her lifelong service to the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa became an icon of compassion to people of all religions; her extraordinary contributions to the care of the sick, the dying, and thousands of others nobody else was prepared to look after, has been recognized and acclaimed throughout the world.

MEDITATION: PONDER THE GOOD NEWS

SHARED BY MOTHER TERESA

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Each person is Jesus in disguise. I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy.  I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.

 It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.

 People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.  The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

 Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

At the hour of death when we come face-to-face with God, we are going to be judged on love; not how much we have done, but how much love we put into the doing.

REFLECTION

We are each called and equipped by God to not only survive our personal Calcutta, but to contribute to those around us whose individual Calcutta intersects our own.   There is no need, then, to travel to far-off lands to contribute…

Wherever we are, with whatever talents and relationships God has entrusted us, we are each called not to do what Mother Teresa did, but– to love as she loved in the Calcutta of our own life.

Made in the very image and likeness of God, We on earth, are God’s love, God’s compassion, God’s will, God’s caregivers, His smile, His tears.  We must show the presence of God in this world until He comes again at the end of time.

Mother Teresa’s 1979 Nobel Peace Prize

Acceptance Speech

Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace that, where there is hatred, I may bring love;

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that, where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that, where there is error, I may bring truth;

that, where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that, where there is despair, I may bring hope; that, where there are shadows, I may bring light;

that, where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to love than to be loved; for it is by forgetting self that one finds;

it is forgiving that one is forgiven; it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.