Something Beautiful: Canonization of St. Teresa of Calcutta

Her parents named her Agnes when she was born in 1910… her full name in Albanian, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. [something like "Ahnyes Gonja Bo-yeah-jee-oo"]. Without getting too deep into a history lesson, I don’t think it’s an accident that God raised up a great Saint from this place and time. She was born a subject of the Ottoman Empire, which fell when she was a girl, and after she left Albania would become Communist. Her homeland would have the sad distinction of proclaiming itself the world’s first officially Atheist state.




But she was gone by then. She knew early on that she wanted to be a religious sister, and that she wanted to be a missionary. So at age 18 she was off to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Agnes Bojaxhiu became Sister Mary Teresa, after St. Terese of Lisieux, and she didn’t have to wait long for her missionary calling to be put to work. She was assigned to the Loreto Sisters’ mission in Calcutta, India. For twenty years she was a schoolteacher and principal, and was very happy doing it.

Everything changed exactly seventy years ago today… September 10, 1946, as Mother Teresa the school principal was riding on a train to her annual retreat. She described it not as a change in vocation, but as a ‘call within a call,’ directing her on a new path, and forming a new community. There were a few years of discernment and process and permission, and on August 17, 1948, she put on a typical Indian sari, white with blue borders, and left her convent to begin the Missionaries of Charity.

As God led her on her new path, it wasn’t long before she found herself in the slums, the places of truly abject poverty, where medical care was almost absent and she would find people literally dying in the street. She didn’t bring modern medicine or any worldly resources, and she wasn’t known for miraculous healing. She brought the love of God, and the brotherhood of Jesus Christ with every human soul, even the most forgotten and neglected.

People began to show up, especially some of her former students. Now there were five of them in the white-and-blue saris, now ten, now twenty… the Missionaries of Charity had begun. Soon there were other houses in India. In 1965 Pope Paul VI asked her to open a house in Venezuela. Then it was Rome, then Tanzania, and by the time she was finished the Missionaries of Charity were worldwide and numbered in the thousands.

In the Gospel read at her Canonization Mass - the same one we heard last Sunday - Jesus asks us whether we would start building a tower without being sure we could finish it, or go into battle without determining that we had a chance of winning. Mother Teresa built something amazing, fought a tremendous battle, and it was her faith, hope, and love that saw her through.…

And when Jesus said that being His disciple means taking up your Cross, she could be the first to say ‘amen.’ Her spiritual struggles are now well-known. Faith was not easy for Mother Teresa. It was something she fought for, something she persevered heroically for, not something that came cheap and easy. She trusted God through years when trust was hard.

And she kept doing the work. Brick by brick, she built that tower. Day by day, she fought that battle. Many were moved to help out; some were moved to transform their lives. Following Jesus is not a way to win popularity and acclaim, generally, but Mother Teresa during her lifetime was almost an exception. People of every religion and none just saw something beautiful and radiant about her. That was the name of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s documentary that brought her to the world’s attention: Something Beautiful for God. Back then, there was only one voice anyone had ever heard of speaking against her, and that was another British commentator, Christopher Hitchens. Back then not many people paid attention to him, and those that did mostly saw it like a wacky sideshow… “hey, check it out, there’s a guy over here who actually doesn’t like Mother Teresa.” Today it seems like every story on her has to mention how she’s supposedly controversial. That’s the age of internet comment boxes for you. During her life, Mother Teresa was about as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

I’ll highlight one criticism, though, because it leads to a great spiritual lesson. I read an article by a man from Calcutta who loves his hometown and deeply resents the attention she drew to the poverty there (think how you would feel if your hometown became world-famous and everyone immediately associated it with human misery). So he blames Mother Teresa for giving Calcutta a bad name. But here’s the lesson, and the great start to her ministry: she didn’t choose Calcutta. She was sent there by the Loreto Sisters. She didn’t look around the world and say, “where’s the awfullest place? Ah! Calcutta!” and get on a plane to go there. I’m quite convinced that if the Loreto Sisters had stationed her as principal in a school in Chicago, we would all know her today as Mother Teresa of Chicago. Calcutta is simply where she was. What she did is go out the door of her home and find someone close by who needed love and care. Is that any different from the call of every Christian? We aren’t all called to start religious orders, or to reduce our worldly possessions to what fits in a bucket. But we’re all called to love our neighbor. God eventually sent her all over the world… but first He sent her to the person down the street.

She didn’t give them great medical care because she wasn’t a doctor. She didn’t give them money because she had none. Later on, as she caught the attention of the world and inspired millions, she found herself in control of huge resources and lots of money, she stayed on mission. I don’t understand criticizing her for not changing her mission to providing modern medical care. That’s a great thing to do, and lots of people do it, but what she did is great too. It’s kind of like criticizing a soup kitchen for not doing anything to improve the schools. It’s just a different mission.

There are so many inspirations to be found in our newest Saint; I just want to call out a few to highlight.

First: listening for God’s call, and being willing to change direction. Mother Teresa’s life was well underway and going well when God asked her to do something new. That can’t happen if we aren’t praying and listening and willing. She was, and look what happened!

Second: it’s about the person in front of you. She ended up leading a global organization with thousands of members in over a hundred countries, but she began by walking out her front door and finding someone who needed love and care. Jesus taught us that we serve Him by serving the most needy. She took Him at His word, and every poor or sick or dying person she embraced and served, she truly saw them as Jesus. No matter how much the organization grew, it was always absolutely personal. The one person in front of her was the most important person in the world. And she treated them like it.

Third: perseverance. Her struggles in faith were unknown until after her death when her diaries came to light. Great heroes need great obstacles to come into their own, and the greatest heroes are forged through the greatest obstacles. Jesus said that ‘from the one to whom much is given, much will be required,” and I wonder if Mother Teresa doesn’t show the converse to also be true: “to the one from whom much is required, much will be given.” To think how much grace she brought into the world by persevering, by staying faithful through her inner struggles. She stayed on mission. She kept loving Jesus.

Saint Meeting

And finally: thank God for Mother Teresa! All she wanted to do, like the Little Flower for whom she was named, was small things with great love. She changed the world with soup and sponge-baths. She changed the world starting right outside her own door. Thank God for this Saint! Everybody seems to have an opinion about what the Church needs… the Church needs to change doctrine to suit the current fashion, the Church needs better leaders, the Church needs more priests, et cetera… some of these things are good ideas and some are kind of silly, but I’m proposing to you that what the Church needs most today is the same as it ever was and will be: the Church needs Saints.

Mother Teresa ended up as one of the most famous and recognizable and influential people on the planet. But that isn’t what made her a Saint. It’s great for the Church to have famous Saints with well-known stories — thank God for these inspiring people! — but Saintliness is for everyone. Jesus asks us if we really want to be His disciples. Mother Teresa said yes, and she said yes in exactly the same way that anyone sitting here today can say yes. She persevered in faith and prayer, and she went out her own door to find someone who needed love and care, and she treated them like Jesus.