Mother Teresa has always been to me an inspiration in terms of
what a single feeble woman could do in alleviating the miseries of this fallen
world. She considered herself just ‘a pencil in God’s hand’ and was convinced
that God was using her ‘nothingness’ to show His greatness. She has exemplified
for me a model of what Jesus Christ meant when he said in Mathew 5:16: ‘...others
will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven’.
At the young age of 18, when Mother Teresa (at that time, her name
being Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu) left her home to commence her life as a
missionary, these were the parting words of her mother to her: ‘Put your hand
in His [Jesus’] hand, and walk alone with Him. Walk ahead; because if you look
back you will go back.’
Few years
later when Mother Teresa was trying to persuade her Bishop to allow her to
start the Missionaries of Charity, she wrote to him saying: ‘God is calling me
– unworthy and sinful that I am....to leave that what I love and expose myself
to new labours and sufferings which will be great, to be the laughing stock of
so many – especially religious – to cling to and choose deliberately the hard
things of an Indian life – to choose loneliness, ignominy and uncertainity. If
the work begins, there will be plenty of humiliations, loneliness and suffering
for me. Self denial and abnegation will be the means to our end – There will be
disappointment – but the good God wants just only our love and our trust in
Him.’
In another
letter, Mother Teresa wrote about herself: ‘By nature I am sensitive, love
beautiful and nice things, comfort and all that comfort can give – to be loved
and love – I know that the life of a Missionary of Charity – will be minus all
these.’
The Bishop
in charge of Mother Teresa was still weighing whether her proposal to start the
Missionaries of Charity was leaving ‘a certain good for an uncertain
gain’. He asked her to explain the
parameters of success in her proposed model. Mother Teresa replied to the
Bishop with these words: ‘I don’t know what the success will be – but if the
Missionaries of Charity have brought joy to one unhappy home - made one
innocent child from the street keep pure for Jesus - one dying person die in
peace with God – don’t you think, Your Grace, it would be worth while offering
everything – just for that one - because that one would bring great joy to the
heart of Jesus.’
Mother
Teresa also wrote to the Bishop requesting him not to dilute the standards of
poverty that she had chosen as the very means to her end. These are her words
to the Bishop: ‘I would be grateful if I could know regarding that absolute
poverty, how far would you insist on lessening or rather making easy that
poverty – which for us has to be the means to reach our end? By absolute
poverty I mean real and complete poverty – not starving – but wanting – just
only what the real poor have – to be really dead to all that the world claims
for its own...’
Mother Teresa used to urge her team: ‘Don’t look for big things,
just do small things with great love...the smaller the thing, the greater must
be our love’. She lived this principle in whatever she was doing throughout the
day. Whether it was ‘big’ or ‘small’ mattered not to her; everything she did
was an opportunity to love.
What are
the success parameters for us today? How does the Mother Teresa model compare
with our models of responding to social issues today? Have we in Christendom,
conformed to the ways of the world by adopting a business model to address the
social issues of our day? In Mark 11: 15 to 17 we read of Jesus Christ saying: Is
it not written, "My house shall be called the house of prayer for all
nations?" But you have made it a den of thieves. Has the time come for
Jesus Christ to purge some of our so called efforts for the upliftment of the
poor and the downtrodden? Has the time come for Jesus Christ to enter and cast
out those who make monitory gain in name of social action and spirituality? And
to overthrow the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold ‘doves’.
The Mother
Teresa model will always remain a high water mark in the history of Christian
missions for the poor.
