Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Come, carry me into the holes of the poor. Come, be my light.
If I ever become a Saint, I will surely be one of darkness. I will be continually absent from heaven, to light the light of those in darkness on earth.
Teresa of Calcutta
Teresa, born Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxhe, is both a very traditional and a very modern saint. Her spirituality was very simple. Her impact on second half of 20th Century was possibly greater than any other single person. Presidents and Popes have influence for maybe 10 years, she was active for 50. The only figure in that period with impact over a comparable period of time was Nelson Mandela. In terms of geographic reach, major figures like Kennedy, Regan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, Indira Gandhi influenced a number of countries – Mother Teresa had direct impact on over 100, including foundations in Albania, East Germany, China, Russia, and Armenia. She wrote personally to President Bush and Saddam Hussein asking them to avoid war – not that she was successful, but she considered it perfectly reasonable to try, and that they would (or at least should) take notice of her.
Her mission as she defined it was to serve the poorest of the poor, “to give tender love and care”. She thought originally that the poor were found in places like India, South American and Africa, but she found them also in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, and London. She served Muslims and Hindus indiscriminatingly, those with leprosy and with AIDS, washing and holding them.
Like Ignatius,[1] she was hard as nails and managed to persuade the most unlikely people to do what she wanted. Saints can be very uncomfortable people to deal with! Her determination was ferocious and was addressed to Popes, Presidents, and Generals without fear or favor. “What Mother wants, she gets” was the common understanding of her Sisters. She kept living for at least ten years after it seemed her body had given out; her saying, “There will be plenty of time to rest in eternity. Here there is so much to do…”
She was very insistent her mission was not social work. She refused a request from the Indian government to help in training social workers. She told her Sisters that their vocation was not alleviate poverty, but to “belong to Jesus”. She fused practical action in the world with deep contemplative prayer, in a way very similar to St Ignatius. But for her the work in itself had no value, there was no desired outcome, it was simply an action to show Jesus’ love to any individual who was otherwise deprived of it. In her first Rule[2] for the Missionaries of Charity she stated: The sick will be nursed as far as possible in their poor homes. The little children will have a school in the slums. The beggars will be sought and visited in their holes… But the reason was not to provide healing or education or human companionship, it was “to carry Christ into the homes and streets of the slums, among the sick, dying, the beggars and the little street children.”
Those who were unfamiliar with or unsympathetic to her spirituality saw her service to the poor as a form of proselytizing. However over time it became so obvious that there were no strings attached to her service that very few maintained this position and she was widely accepted by both Hindus and Muslims in India, and those of any faith or none around the world, even where they disagreed profoundly with her over issues like abortion.
Her personal faith was absolute but her experience of faithfulness was difficult in the extreme. This only became apparent after her death, when personal correspondence with her spiritual directors was made public as part of her canonization proceedings (something she had strongly sought to avoid).
Her childhood spirituality and early call to the missions appear unexceptional. In her mid-thirties, she received what she described as a “call within a call”, which led her to ask for release from the Loreto Sisters, which she had originally joined, to respond to the voice of Jesus saying “Come, carry me into the holes of the poor. Come, be my light”. She identified this with attempting to satiate the thirst of Christ on the Cross, which she saw as an infinite thirst for love.
Mother Teresa in her early life had a very strong sense of her relationship with Jesus and the consolation that comes with such a relationship. But following the call to serve the poor she lost all sense of that personal connection to Jesus and experienced years of complete spiritual isolation. “I do realize that when I open my mouth to speak to people about God and God’s work, it brings them light, joy and courage. But I get nothing from it. Inside it is all dark and feeling that I am totally cut off from God.” She once said “If I ever become a Saint, I will surely be one of darkness. I will be continually absent from heaven, to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
The life of Mother Teresa demonstrates that holiness does not necessarily make us feel good, and that God does not reward doing good in the ways that we might expect. She also demonstrates what can be accomplished if we let God work through us – she was always insistent that it was God doing “the work”, not her. In this she was one with Saint Paul, Saint Ignatius, and others of the great “practical” saints. Pope Benedict XVI, in his first encyclical[3], used her example to illustrate the point that prayer and practical service (works of charity) do not conflict but rather support one another.
The life of Mother Teresa
Teresa was born in what is now Macedonia, then Albania, in 1910. Her father was politically active and died when she was 8, possibly assassinated. She felt an early call to missionary activity and at 18 left home to join the Irish Loreto Sisters (never to see her mother or sister again). She started to learn English and quickly moved to Calcutta where she became a teacher at the convent school which catered for daughters of wealthy Indians.
Teresa was always aware of the poverty of India, and the suffering particularly during the Second World War and in the subsequent Hindu-Muslim conflicts. In 1946 she felt the call to serve the poor of Calcutta by living with them, but the local bishop to whom she turned for guidance took the matter very seriously and acted very slowly, much to her frustration. After two years she obtained permission to leave the convent and adopted the blue sari, the cheapest form of clothing available, in which she became famous. The first years were very hard, but in 1950 she received permission from the Vatican to found the Order of the Missionaries of Charity.
Her first action, beyond simply visiting the poor, was the creation of a place for those who were otherwise dying on the streets. In 1952, an abandoned Hindu temple became Nirmal Hriday, where each was treated with dignity and within their own tradition, Hindu, Muslim or Christian: “A beautiful death is for those that have lived like animals to die like angels, loved and wanted”.
Following this she wished to create a center for lepers but the degree of fear and prejudice was such that she had to start by setting up mobile clinics to visit their encampments. In 1957 she succeeded in creating her first leper colony which provided accommodation and, perhaps even more importantly, the dignity of work opportunities. Next came a home for orphans and homeless young people.
By the 1960s her work in India was becoming more widely known. In 1965 she accepted (reluctantly at first) an invitation to found a house in Venezuela. By her death there were 600 houses in 120 countries, including those under communist rule that had previously forbidden any Christian presence or activity.
As Mother Teresa became better known she was frequently invited to speak at important gatherings and always refused, seeing this as no part of her mission, and being personally terrified at the prospect. She eventually agreed to speak at a convention for Catholic women, in the extraordinarily incongruous setting of Las Vegas, and did so without notes. She seemed to treat it almost as a form of prayer. Over the years she became famous for speaking simply and directly, and without any thought for the sensibilities of her audience, however grand – who somehow accepted what she said in the spirit of sincerity with which it was expressed, even when they disagreed totally with her.
As “the work” was extended Mother Teresa felt the need to include more types of people and ways of service than only an Order of Sisters. She created the Sick and Suffering Co-workers as a way for those who were disabled and suffering themselves, to partner with a Missionary of Charity Sister. Her own partner for many years was the Belgian Jacqueline de Decker. The Co-workers of Mother Teresa was a more conventional lay organization supporting the work by fund-raising and gifts in kind. The activity of fund-raising was always problematic for Mother Teresa since she wished to rely totally on unsolicited alms-giving and the immediate action of Christ. As the scale of the work increased this became impossible, but the tension remained and towards the end of her life Mother Teresa closed down the official structure of the Co-workers organization, much to the anguish of many involved.
In 1963 she founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers to enable male participation in her work and activities which were impossible for women to undertake in India. Because it was not permitted for a woman to be head of a male order the male order was independent of the Order of Sisters. In 1976 a further order dedicated to the contemplative life was founded, and later, in 1984, Missionaries of Charity Fathers for ordained priests.
Mother Teresa first addressed the poverty of the First World in Rome, of all places, followed by Melbourne, Australia, and London. She quickly came to realize that poverty had many forms and frequently founded houses in “rich” countries to serve the destitute, addicted, victims of conflict – anyone who needed compassionate support. In doing so she crossed boundaries within societies and political systems in an extraordinary way. For her those boundaries did not exist – as for Jesus they did not. She worked with military dictators, Communist leaders, atheist politicians, all of whom she saw as a means to serve Jesus – and often they somehow identified with her faith even while completely rejecting it, as when the Soviet Minister of Health told her he would pray for her and her Sisters!
In 1979, her work was recognized by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. She responded in typical fashion, starting her acceptance address by leading the prayer of Saint Francis, which for anyone else would have been an unforgivable diplomatic blunder. She also refused the traditional ceremonial banquet, somehow avoiding giving great offense.
Like many charismatic leaders, she and her followers faced the challenge of transition as she got older and her health started to fail. After recurrent heart problems in 1980s she wanted to step down, but hers was the only vote against her continuing as superior. By 1997, when it was clear her strength was gone, her sisters relented and appointed Sister Nirmala as her successor. After a short period in which she was able to revert to being a simple nun in Calcutta, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997. Many people had decided she was a saint, even before her death. Now the movement for her canonization got into full swing.
The process of Canonization
The veneration of martyrs (and preservation of relics – remains of the body or objects closely associated with the person) started in the earliest days of the church. By 4th Century such recognition was extended beyond martyrs to those who were considered to have been exemplary Christians, usually as a result of a life of austerity and/or prominent service to the Church. Saint Augustine and Saint Antony, for example, were recognized very early. Through the 10th Century the cult of saints developed rapidly, along with trade in relics and many dubious practices. Miracles were commonly accepted with minimal authentication, since little notion of scientific evidence existed.
Initially the recognition of a saint was purely a matter of popular acclamation. Regulation was first established at a local level, by requiring a bishop to sanction the veneration of a saint. The authority gradually passed to the papacy, more as a matter of achieving higher status for a local saint than as a matter of central control. By the 13th Century papal control was regularized, and increasingly formalized over the centuries, notably by Urban VIII in 1642 and Benedict XIV in 1738. By the 20th Century the process was marked by an emphasis on skepticism towards “the cause” (i.e. the case that someone should be declared a saint) and scientific evidence regarding miracles was required. The process remains in two stages, the first at local diocesan level, and the second in the Vatican under the jurisdiction of what is now the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
In 1969 the reform of the Roman Calendar (the directory of feast-days) led to a large-scale reappraisal of early saints of doubtful authenticity. In 1983 Pope John-Paul II simplified what had become very complicated, lengthy, and expensive process, also removing the directly adversarial character and the office of “prosecuting counsel”, commonly known as “the Devil’s Advocate”. John-Paul II in 25 years accepted the beatification or canonization of more than 1500 people (more than the previous 400 years). These include a much more diverse representation of the people of God in terms of region of origin and social standing.
Despite the evolution of formal processes and standards of proof, the underlying basis of canonization has remained largely constant. It starts with recognition of a person’s special status as a practicing Christian often associated with the burial place, and the expectation of divine acknowledgement of this status in the form of miracles. A legal process with appointed representatives follows, leading to a series of formal decisions:
- recognizing the holiness of the person (declared “Venerable”),
- bestowing the title “Blessed” (known as beatification),
- canonization, including establishment of a universally recognized feast-day.
The primary justification for canonization lies in the life of the person. Miracles are seen as supportive evidence of holiness, but not in themselves the proof of sanctity. It is also fundamental that canonization doesn’t make someone a saint, it simply declares that someone is a saint.
In theory a General Council of the Church may declare someone a saint. This was considered a possibility for Pope John XXIII who died while the Second Vatican Council was in session. However the Council did not proceed with the process and possible conflict with the papacy was avoided. Pope John was beatified, following the normal process, in 2000.
Mother Teresa was beatified in 2003. Pope John-Paul II waived the requirement that the process of canonization could not start until a person had been dead for 5 years (which until 1983 was a limit of 50 years). She was canonized by Pope Francis in a ceremony in Rome in 2016.
Questions for Consideration
Footnotes (Click footnote number to return to text.)
[2] See Church Life and Traditions: Monasticism and Religious Orders
[3] Deus Caritas Est (2005)