Offaly influencer reflects on his friendship with St Mother Teresa

It is a privilege in this week's thought for the week to be able to write a few words about St. Mother Teresa and how she understood and lived the mercy of Our Lord in her life and work on this the 26th anniversary of her passing.

Without question, St. Mother Teresa was one of the most respected individuals in the 20th century, both in the Church and throughout the world. St. Mother Teresa was easily recognized, listened to attentively, persuasive in her manner and would not take no for an answer. Mother once reflected that her vocation was grounded in belonging to Jesus, and in the firm conviction that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ.

“The work we do” Mother asserted, “is nothing more than a means of transforming our love for Christ into something concrete.” We all know people who are inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus to do corporal and spiritual works of mercy in the world today and who reach out to relieve poverty, hunger, thirst and homelessness and who bring the joy of the Gospel into our world and invite others in turn to come to know Jesus in their lives.

The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are set out in that challenging reading from St. Matthew's gospel which ends with words of Jesus that were at the heart of the mission of St. Mother Teresa: "As often as you did it to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me." I am grateful to have met many good and saintly people who 'do amazing works of mercy'.

No doubt you too can think of women and men who care for the sick and suffering in our community, our country and our world who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger and often do so quietly behind the scenes, without seeking any recognition or reward. In the canonisation of St. Mother Teresa a few years ago which I was blessed to attend, we are being offered a modern day model of holiness or icon of mercy. Someone we can look to as an example and an encouragement for ourselves to do mercy and to be merciful, especially for those who are most rejected or forgotten in our world.

Spiritual life

I thought in my writings this week that I would concentrate on some of the features of Mother Teresa's spiritual life that I had come to know in my years of knowing her and working with her. I was blessed to have known Mother Teresa for fifteen years. I especially treasure the times I was asked to be her companion or chaperone while she was in various places like Calcutta, Romania, Ireland and America that I was present in when she was there, because it enabled me to ask her questions and observe closely. In the course of knowing Mother, I always saw her receive each person in the same loving and faith filled way.

She saw the face of God in everyone, always approaching each person with love, compassion, kindness and the gift of her complete self. Time was never an issue. I once asked her, "How is it that you never seem to judge or criticize anyone who comes to you?" She said, "I never judge anyone, because it doesn't allow me the time to love them." Some of my most favorite moments with Mother were when I was in the main Missionary of Charities convent in Calcutta. These were times when Mother motioned over to me to kneel right beside her in the chapel at mass and share her prayer book and missal with me. I remember listening intently to her speaking voice and her very sweet singing voice.  Some of the more personal moments, such as Mother giving me spiritual guidance or teaching me simple prayers to help me better navigate some of the obstacles of life. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from Mother was just how much God really loves each one of us, intimately, compassionately and tenderly. Each one of us is carved in the palm of God’s hands, each one of us is so precious to him.

Special instructions

I remember one late evening when I was in the main Mother house after spending the day in Khaligat working with the sick and dying, that Mother walked  and linked me to her chapel after an exhausting day for evening devotions when she suddenly paused and genuflected and looked up at the large cross of Jesus crucified above and behind the altar with the large words: ‘I Thirst’ printed next to it.  As she looked up at the cross Mother said to me: ’Look at Jesus on his cross, he is so innocent, holy and pure.’ At this point I looked at Mother’s face. She then said: ‘But his head is bent to kiss you, and his arms are outstretched to hold you, and his heart is open fully to enclose your heart with his. So Ronan please be only all for Jesus always. This is the great love that Jesus has for each one of us. The important thing is to keep this love of Jesus alive inside your heart, and to share it with everyone you meet and be only all for Jesus and thirst for him always. Don’t allow anything to interfere with your love for Jesus." Those words which I am sure Mother Teresa said to many others have become a mantra for me. I try my best everyday to apply them to my life's journey. I may not always succeed at applying them and have failed miserably at times, especially when people act in ways I find difficult or unconscionable. When I don’t succeed, I am nonetheless highly aware of that failure, and usually intend to make greater and better efforts at doing so going forward.

Role model

I consider Mother Teresa one of my role models, a person whose life I try to mirror. To me she is one of the most important saints and friends in my life.  Her ability to practically convey and reflect upon what mercy is, and can be, to contemporary society was amazing and a gift from God. Arguably, for me her message resonates more than any other contemporary Christian. Mother Teresa visioned mercy similar to the gaze and embrace from the father to his wayward son, first told by Jesus in the famous parable of the Prodigal Son we all know. This gaze and embrace of mercy propelled Mother Teresa to go beyond the security found in the comfort of her surroundings . Her calling led Mother Teresa to famously spend it in the slums of Calcutta, West Bengal, serving the poorest of our poor. Mother Teresa was not satisfied in her first calling, and that deep and personal encounter in her second calling propelled her forward in mercy. She wanted to expand that loving gaze and embrace of the father to his wayward prodigal son; that loving gaze and embrace of Christ found in the “distressing disguise of the poor”.

God's compassion

In all my life, I have never experienced the tenderness of God more closely than when I worked with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta for a few years. What drew me to Calcutta for a number of years, was the overflowing compassion and joy that Mother Teresa had for everyone and especially the poor.  Through her and her missionaries I learned that compassion asks us to go deeper to where it hurts. We must search within ourselves first, to our own sources of pain, hurt, loss and despair. We must  look at and expose our own insecurities to recognize our common need for tenderness, mercy, forgiveness and love.

I learned that I had to encounter Christ and to allow the warmth of His merciful gaze and embrace to transform every aspect of my life. I learnt that God's compassion for us challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those who are in tears. God's compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. God's compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. I believe, through compassion and ultimately by imaging Christ in the poor, by suffering with them, we can reveal to the poor like Mother Teresa did, their beauty, importance and self worth. Yet amidst trying conditions working with and for our poorest, Mother Teresa and her sisters and volunteers found a sustainable joy that we in the “more developed world” lack. Here in Ireland we too suffer from this condition.

Laudable have been the contributions of our civic leaders over the past 30 years towards entrenching our individual rights. To their credit, we have expanded our understanding of our individual rights and inalienable freedoms. We have corrected many historical injustices but with many more to do. However, despite our progress towards greater individual rights, the truth of the matter is that it has come at a cost. Progress in that regard has come at the cost of a lesser developed understanding of the truth of our interconnectedness to each other, that we in fact belong to one another.

Togetherness

My time spent with Mother Teresa and her sisters revealed to me the strength found in community and togetherness. Together, it is possible to welcome the stranger in a manner we could never do alone. Collectively, we can care for our elderly and infirm in a manner we could never do alone. We can clothe our naked and feed our hungry, in ways we could never imagine doing alone.

But more importantly, together we can find healing in a manner we would never find by doing so alone! Calcutta stirred my heart towards a deeper way of living. It caused in me a deeper and more radical gratitude and love. Everything became deeper! Family memories became more meaningful, time with friends more fraternal, and even my interactions with the worlds lost, abandoned, homeless, dying and those most in need less rushed.

Deep faith

Mother Teresea began each day of her work in the slums of Calcutta by receiving Communion. Then she took that divine love out to the streets to share with the stranger, those who were, in her words, “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.” Mother Teresa’s deep faith and fervent spirituality were not born of any grandiose spiritual exercises, but were developed simply through her daily prayer life, being in tune with God through the prayer of the Mass, reception of Holy Communion, praying the Rosary and just spending time with the Lord present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

The driving force of Mother Teresa's boundless energy and compassion was prayer. No matter where she was, no matter how busy she was, no matter how many demands were placed on her, Mother Teresa prayed daily for lengthy periods of time. Explaining the source of her strength, Mother Teresa often said: “I don't think that I could do this work for even one week if I didn't have four hours of prayer every day.” To the world, Saint Teresa of Calcutta was certainly “in tune with God” and even in the midst of her own dark night of the soul, when she herself felt that her prayer was arid and God was distant from her, Mother did not stop praying, but remained in tune with God, patiently waiting for God to respond to her prayer, once commenting, “I am perfectly happy to be God’s flower in the field.”
The secret of Mother Teresa’s life she said was very simple: "I pray. If we learn to pray, we will belong to Jesus. I realize that praying to Him is loving Him. Love to pray. Does your mind and your heart go to Jesus as soon as you get up in the morning? This is prayer. We need prayer. Feel the need to pray often during the day. Prayer, to be fruitful, must come from the heart. Prayer enlarges the heart. Let us remember: if we want to be able to love, we must be able to pray. If you want to pray better, you have to pray more. The more you pray, the better you will pray. Prayer is the very life of oneness, of being one with Christ.”

Thought for the week

As your thought for the week, we must remember that the most fundamental vocation and purpose of our lives is to love. However, love without sacrifice and mercy is empty, and love without pain is vain. Mother Teresa once said that humanity has cured so many incurable diseases, but one disease that afflicts humanity today is that there are many people who feel unwanted, lonely and unloved. May each and every one of us become God’s light and hand in the world to touch a wounded soul and heal a broken heart through acts of kindness, love, charity, mercy and forgiveness that flows from a deep place of faith in God.

May we remember the immortal words of St. Therese of Lisieux: “My life is for a moment, I am only the breath of God. O, my God teach me that for loving you and loving my neighbor, I have only today for my life is only for a moment.” Let me leave you with a daily prayer recited by Mother Teresa and attributed to St. John Henry Newman, it was said to be among her favorites. "Dear Jesus, help me to spread Thy fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Thy spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Thine. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus. Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. Amen." For me St. Mother Teresa saw the face of Christ in the poor, the sick, and the dying. Every day she spent helping the sick, the poor, and the dying, mending our broken world by helping her beloved Jesus, who unfortunately at this present time most of us are rejecting. Holiness should be the goal for each of us. As we honor the memory of St. Mother Teresa on the anniversary of her death this week, may she intercede for us and help us to place ourselves in the hands of God, receive the graces we need “to have an open heart to be able to see God in the face of our poor,” so that one day, with her, we will achieve holiness as we rejoice in God’s presence forever in heaven.