you — but in this letter Mother wants to touch your heart instead. Jesus wants to stir up our hearts, so not to lose our early love….
Why is Mother saying these things? After reading [John Paul II’s] letter on “I Thirst,” I was struck so much — I cannot tell you what I felt. His letter made me realize more than ever how beautiful is our vocation. How great is God’s love for us in choosing [us] to satiate that thirst of Jesus, for love, for souls — giving us our special place in the Church. At the same time we are reminding the world of his thirst, something that was being forgotten.
I wrote to Holy Father to thank him. [His] letter is a sign … to go more into what is this great thirst of Jesus for each one. It is also a sign for Mother, that the time has come for me to speak openly of the gift God gave Sept. 10th — to explain fully as I can what means for me the thirst of Jesus.
For me, Jesus’ thirst is something so intimate — so I have felt shy until now to speak to you of Sept. 10th — I wanted to do as Our Lady who “kept all these things in her heart.” [Jesus’] words on the wall of every MC chapel, they are not from the past only, but alive here and now, spoken to you. Do you believe it? If so, you will hear, you will feel His presence. Let it become as intimate for each of you, just as for Mother — this is the greatest joy you could give me.
Jesus Himself must be the one to say to you “I Thirst.” Hear your own name. Not just once. Every day. If you listen with your heart, you will hear, you will understand.
Why does Jesus say “I Thirst”? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words — if you remember anything from Mother’s letter, remember this — “I Thirst” is something much deeper than just Jesus saying “I love you.” Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you — you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him.
Before it was Our Lady pleading with Mother; now it is Mother in her name pleading with you — listen to Jesus’ thirst.
How to approach the thirst of Jesus? Only one secret — the closer you come to Jesus, the better you will know His thirst. “Repent and believe,” Jesus tells us. What are we to repent? Our indifference, our hardness of heart. What are we to believe? Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor — He knows your weakness, He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you. He is not bound by time. Whenever we come close to Him — we become partners of Our Lady, St. John, Magdalen. Hear Him. Hear your own name. Make my joy and yours complete.
Let us pray,
God bless you,
M. Teresa MC
The Grace of Jubilee
Three years after penning her “Varanasi Letter,” in another confluence of grace and circumstance, Mother Teresa again began sharing the secrets of her soul, on the thirst of Jesus and her experience of the train. The turning point came in January of that year, as her Sisters were preparing to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (1946-1996) of her Inspiration Day.
I had traveled from our priests’ community (whose headquarters had recently moved from the Bronx to Tijuana, Mexico) to join Mother Teresa and her Sisters in Washington, DC. From there I was to return with her for a visit to our priests and seminarians in Tijuana. The day after I arrived in Washington, her Sisters held a special Mass in anticipation of the golden jubilee of September 10. Immediately after the festivities, we left for the airport for the flight to San Diego, and on to Tijuana.
I had the chance to sit next to Mother Teresa for the first part of the flight. Shortly after takeoff, she began gazing out the window, lost in thought. From time to time, she would make comments — quiet remarks, almost asides — that told me she was reminiscing, absorbed in another time and place. It became clear that she was recalling, in some detail, the experience of September 10, fifty years earlier. I was struck not only by what she was revealing, but by how unusual it was for her to be commenting like this on memories so intimate.
As that jubilee year of 1996 went on, and she visited her Sisters around the world, each community in turn celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Inspiration Day. Each celebration became another occasion for her to reminisce, to bring those deep waters to the surface again, preparing the veritable flood of references to September 10 that would fill her letters throughout the following year, 1997 — the last year of her life.
We have begun, in these chapters, to uncover the rest of the story, the unknown story of Mother Teresa. This was what happened on the train, this was what made her who she was, and most importantly for us, this was the message she wanted written down and shared — inviting us into the same “light and love” she discovered long ago.
The light Mother Teresa received, the transforming light of God’s thirst for us, was the very light that gave her victory over her darkness — and not only hers, but over the bleak darkness of Calcutta. This was the light she hoped would touch our lives and transform our darkness as well. And this is the light whose beauty and power we will begin to explore in Section Two.
Section Two
Illumination
“The strong grace of Divine Light and Love … received on the train journey to Darjeeling on 10th September, 1946, is where the M.C. [the worldwide work of charity] begins — in the depths of God’s infinite longing to love and to be loved.” 18
—Mother Teresa
“They don’t know Me — so they don’t want Me….” 19
—Jesus to Mother Teresa (1947)
“You are the light of the world.”
—Matthew 5:14
“Come, be My light….” 20
—Jesus to Mother Teresa (1947)
Six
In the Darkness, Light
St. Teresa?
Mother Teresa’s holiness — seldom discussed in accounts of her life — is the passkey to understanding the very qualities we most admire in her. Her sanctity is the ultimate source of the light she shone on the world. Without understanding the role of personal holiness, a holiness open to us all, one can only conclude that Mother Teresa had been born that way, a rare kind of prodigy, like an Einstein or Mozart of the spiritual realm, rather than a model inviting imitation, drawing us on.
But what the commentators tended to overlook, the poor and the simple had already sensed. They could feel the presence of God in Mother Teresa; they intuited her holiness, and were drawn to it. As her work progressed, a growing groundswell of recognition and respect — even in the press — pointed to the presence of God in her. By the time she won the Nobel Prize, Time magazine had already proclaimed Mother Teresa a “living saint” on its front cover. On the other side of the world, the poor of Calcutta, sleeping under bits of paper and cloth, lit candles to the divinity they saw in her, honored in makeshift shrines by the roadside.
