VATICAN CORNER
…continued Due to the high-profile of Mother Teresa’s work in India and internationally, her cause for sainthood has been well-funded. In her own lifetime, and still today, she is one of the most famous people in the world. She was affectionately known as the “saint of the gutter” for her unconditional love for the poor, abandoned and marginalized. Through silence and contemplation, in prayerful adoration before the Tabernacle, she learned to see the true face of God in every suffering human being. In prayer she discovered the essential truth which underlies the Church’s social teaching and her religious and humanitarian work. While her actions gained widespread admiration, Mother Teresa was not beloved by all and was criticized for the quality of care in her clinics and taking donations from Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and disgraced American financier Charles Keating. Some said she might have done more to fight the causes of poverty in the world. Mother Teresa was aware of these criticisms. She would shrug as if saying: ‘while you go on discussing causes and explanations, I will kneel beside the poorest of the poor and attend to their needs’. The beggar, the leper, the victim of AIDS do not need discussions and theories; they need love. The hungry cannot wait for the rest of the world to come up with the perfect answer; they need effective solidarity. The dying, the handicapped and the defenseless unborn, need a loving human presence and a caring hand. Mother Teresa herself often struggled in her faith, feeling separated from God and unable to find him in life. Those involved with promoting her path to sainthood have compared these feelings, which she called the “Darkness,” to the cries of Jesus on the Cross, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” Mother Teresa lit a flame of love which her spiritual daughters and sons of the Missionaries of Charity continue to spread today. Some of her inspirational words are: “The fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace”. Let us begin to change the world for the better by turning in humble prayer to God, the Creator of all that exists. Let us be renewed in faith. Let our hearts be filled with genuine love. Let each one personally do something useful and demanding for those in need. Only when we learn to see others, no matter how different and removed from us, as our beloved brothers and sisters will humanity learn the ways of peace. Then truly we will have done “something beautiful for God”. Sometimes she would say, “You don’t have to go to Calcutta to find the poor. You find the poor right around you, in your own family. Those acts of mercy are little things: a smile, a word of consolation, reading the newspaper for someone, doing the shopping, spending a little time speaking to them.” Her spiritual legacy is contained in those words of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”
Sources: www.gettyimages.com, news.va, usatoday.com, motherteresa.org . ncregister.com