ST TERESA OF CALCUTTA AND DOING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL FOR GOD

Fr Billy Swan

‘Dono di Maria…Gift of Mary’ is a convent of the Sisters of Charity located close to the Holy Office near St Peter’s Square here in Rome. For six evenings of the week, the sisters welcome fifty-five homeless people into the convent where they gather for a meal. Recently, I have volunteered to help out on Friday afternoons to prepare the food, meet and greet, give a brief two-minute reflection on the Gospel of the day and once the meal is over, help with the wash up. The fifty-five guests (that’s all they have room for) range from all ages, nationalities and religions. Many are refugees. All live with a high degree of uncertainty regarding what the future holds. In the dining hall is a large crucifix with Jesus’ dying words written beneath it: ‘I thirst’.

For me, being there each week is an experience of communion, respect, joy and reaching out to brothers and sisters whose lives are hard. With the sisters, it is a shared moment when together, we do something beautiful for God.

On 5^th September, we celebrate the feast day of the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, St Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997). She was born in Macedonia and joined the Sisters of Loreto, ending up in Dublin. Growing up, I remember watching interviews with Mother Teresa with people like the late Gay Byrne and watching her accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Everyone who listened to her was captivated by the depth of her faith in God that showed itself as love in action among the poorest of the poor. Quoting the Gospel, she consistently reminded us that it is in them that Jesus presents himself to us as “the least of my brothers and sisters” (Matt. 25:32ff). In countries like America, she was fearless in upholding the dignity of the human person including the unborn and the elderly.

For St Teresa, this dignity of human beings comes from the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of the God of love. Therefore, when we love each other, this dignity and divine identity is brought to life. This is the spirituality that animates every convent of the Sisters of Charity around the world, including the one where I help in Rome. Loving and serving people lifts their souls to faith, to hope and ultimately to God. It could be through a smile, a word of welcome, asking someone’s name, listening to their story, hearing a line from the Gospel, making a contact or sharing food; all of these combine to communicate to people that they matter; that someone cares and that God cares.

Charitable mercy has a remarkable power to change people – the people who are merciful, the ones who receive mercy and the ones who witness it. One person who witnessed the mercy of Mother Teresa and who was changed by it was the former BBC journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.

Muggeridge was a former left-wing radical. He became a communist but became disillusioned. When the former communist and continuing agnostic researched the work of Mother Teresa's order of nuns in Calcutta's House of the Dying, he experienced a religious conversion which eventually led him to enter the Catholic Church in 1982. In 1971, Muggeridge published his book ‘Something Beautiful for God’ that was based on his friendship with Mother Teresa and the months he spent observing her work in Calcutta. In that book he wrote:

“It will be for posterity to decide whether she is a saint. I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ’s Gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. For this, all who have the inestimable privilege of knowing her, or knowing of her, must be eternally grateful.”

St Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters invite all the baptised to join them in being Apostles of the unwanted. They remind us that the biggest poverty is the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for and deserted by everybody. One of the greatest evils today is lack of love and charity, that terrible indifference toward one’s neighbour who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease. They remind us that mercy expresses God’s thirst for souls. Loving mercy gives birth to faith and generates hope. It connects us to one another and unites us together to God.

 In the words of Pope St John Paul II at her beatification on 19 October 2003, charity brings “souls to God and God to souls, satiating Christ's thirst, especially for those most in need, those whose vision of God had been dimmed by suffering and pain”.

On the feast of St Teresa of Calcutta, let us also be missionaries of charity in today’s world. I can do things you can’t. You can do things I can’t. But together we can do something beautiful for God.