the immense goodness of God poured forth on us all. She became a reflection of God’s glory in miniature, like the sun’s full radiance dazzling off a tiny shard of glass.
God had sent her to soften the rude landscape of human suffering. She would accomplish this by “being his light” and radiating his love, illuminating the darkness that descends on the bearers of unrelenting hardship.
The day it was announced that Mother Teresa of Calcutta had won the Nobel Peace Prize, I had just arrived on campus at Southern Illinois University, where I was chaplain. Within minutes of the announcement, I received a call from Mother Teresa’s Sisters in St. Louis, whom I had gotten to know during my chaplaincy. They were asking if I would come over to field questions from the newspaper and TV reporters who were gathering outside their convent. The reporters’ comments revealed their understanding, and even delight, at Mother Teresa’s nomination. They seemed genuinely intrigued that the prize winner had not been a president, scientist, or politician. For the first time, the Nobel Prize had been won by a diminutive, humble religious woman who worked obscurely in a third-world country. This disruption of the usual order had charmed the world and piqued their curiosity.
But as the days passed, while the world press lauded the Nobel Committee’s choice, the professional religious I knew kept asking, “But why Mother Teresa? Aren’t there others who do what she does, who serve the poor just as selflessly as she? Why such commotion over her?” An excellent question, I thought — and an important one.
The question brought to mind an episode from the life of St. Francis of Assisi. According to the thirteenth-century account, a certain pilgrim had been traversing the hills of Umbria in the hopes of meeting up with the young Francis. After weeks of searching, he finally found himself standing before a very ordinary looking man. Perplexed and disappointed, the young searcher looked intently at Francis and remarked, “Why is the whole world running after you?”
Indeed. Almost a thousand years later, we could ask the same question: Why was the whole world running after Mother Teresa? How do we explain the phenomenon of a Nobel Prize-winning, elderly Albanian nun, with no particular qualifications and no extraordinary talents? How do we account for her immense, seemingly universal impact? How do we explain the power of an attraction that only grew throughout her life, and continues still?
To answer the “why” of Mother Teresa’s power of attraction, and to understand her relevance in our post-modern world, we need to examine both her and ourselves more deeply. We need to ask what it was in her that moved us so, and what it was in us that responded so readily. What hidden chords of soul was she touching? What was God touching in us, through her?
Understanding what she touched in us is significant, since it points to and constitutes our common ground with her. The unnamed place that she awakened in us reveals an interior terrain, a sacred inner ground that we share with her — placed within us by the One who fashioned us for himself.
Is the same divinity that claimed such unrestricted space in her heart, there beneath the surface of our soul as well? If so, why do we not advert to it, or attend to it as she? Perhaps because, in the main, we inhabit but the surface of ourselves. And so we can be surprised at times by the power of our response to deeper things, to sudden incursions of the divine, to unexpected touches of grace.
For many of us, discovering Mother Teresa, watching her or hearing her speak, became just such an incursion of the divine. She became a portal and guide to our neglected realms of spirit — and to meeting the God who awaits us there.
How do we account for the phenomenon of Mother Teresa, for the impact and attraction she wielded, even among the agnostic and unchurched? What was her secret? What made her who she was? What formed and inspired her? What hidden inner fire motivated her and drew her on, in the most squalid conditions, to become the saint she was?
And what of ourselves? Can we become for others a source of the same kind of goodness we saw in her? Can her inner fire yield a similar light and warmth in us?
Answering these questions is the purpose of this book.
Thankfully, Mother Teresa has left clear and abundant clues — clues that allow us not only to understand, but to share in the secret of her goodness, in the secret of her transformation from ordinary schoolteacher, to Nobel laureate, to saint. For those who would wish to emulate her, her life and teachings are replete — as we will see in these pages — with signs that point the way to finding her same happiness, her same fulfillment, and her same union with the Almighty.
The riches of Mother Teresa’s example and teaching are more abundant than any single volume can hold (the documents used in her cause for sainthood comprise more than eighty volumes). While future volumes will explore other themes from her teaching, the scope of this book is limited to what Mother Teresa herself considered the core of her message.
This present volume is divided into three sections. The story of the inner fire that changed Mother Teresa’s life is told in this first section, “Fire in the Night.” The second section, “Illumination,” introduces the festival of light issuing from this inner fire, a light that illumined the face of God for her — and through her, for so many. The final section, “Transformation,” shows how her “consuming fire” within (Heb 12:29) changed a young and unsure Sister Teresa into Mother Teresa, and how it can transform us as well.
“Through the tender mercy of our God,
… the day shall dawn upon us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death.”
— Luke 1:78-79
Two
A Life Bathed in Light
After Mother Teresa’s passing in 1997, a world that had come to admire her was hungry for details of her remarkable life. A multitude of books and articles appeared in those ensuing years, chronicling every aspect of her person and life, from her public accomplishments to the private mystery of her inner darkness. But as celebrated as she was in both life and death, after all these years Mother Teresa’s central message, and the one great secret of her soul, remains almost entirely unknown.
What was deepest in her, what motivated and energized her, is still a mystery even to her most ardent admirers. But it was not her wish that this secret remain forever unknown. The answer to her mystery is there, like a golden thread, woven throughout the teachings she left for her religious family, particularly in the months leading up to her death. Scattered throughout Mother Teresa’s letters and spiritual conferences, the full richness of her soul still awaits us.
Looking Back on an Extraordinary Life
Before exploring the secrets of this saint and Nobel Prize winner, let us step back a moment to review the highlights of her extraordinary life — as a refresher for those who may have forgotten the broad strokes of her life, and for the sake of a new generation that has not known Mother Teresa beyond name and renown.
Mother
