Teresa awakened both frightened and fascinated them at once.
Mother Teresa would point out that no matter how noble our intentions in giving monetarily, both God and neighbor needed more and better. God had not sent us a check in our need, but his Son. He gave of himself, without measure — as any of us can, anywhere we are, and whenever we choose. We are the ones called to help those around us, not Mother Teresa, not her Sisters in the far corners of the Third World, who have already done their part and more. We are the ones already there, living on the same street, in the same neighborhood, where so much hidden suffering and need go unheeded. We are the ones sent by God, anointed and equipped to give of ourselves to those he has placed around us. We need no special abilities or resources to do the work of love; we need “only begin,” even in the smallest ways. Mother Teresa knew that even the smallest seeds of charity could yield a rich and lasting harvest, had we but the courage to roll up our sleeves and begin. She would invite her audience to take some concrete step, no matter how small, to serve those around them, to put God’s love and theirs into “living action.”
In deference to the invitation of her friend, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa spent the greater part of her later years sharing this message with audiences worldwide, from kindergartens to the plenum of the United Nations. John Paul had asked her to proclaim God’s love especially in those places where he could not go — places ravaged by war and hardship, and wherever political realities prevented him from visiting, such as the then Soviet bloc, and the vast expanse of the Muslim world.
If Mother Teresa’s encounter and message were of such importance, why haven’t we heard of them — or why have we heard so little? The main reason is that she chose to live out the grace of her encounter in her own life first, in silent service to the neediest, before sharing it with her Sisters or the world. Because of her long silence, not only the importance of her message but its very existence may come as a surprise, even to her admirers. This had been her great secret, from 1946 on. This was the inner flame that led her through her dark night of the soul, just as the column of fire that led Israel through the desert long ago.
Apart from the grace of Mother Teresa’s encounter on the train, nothing adequately explains her. Nothing else can fully account for the life she led, or the extraordinary things she accomplished. Mother Teresa was more than merely a female Albert Schweitzer. She was above all a mystic, although a mystic with sleeves rolled up, whose spirit scaled the heights even while her body bent lovingly over the downtrodden and the dying. By exploring the secrets of her deep mysticism in the chapters to come, those who already knew Mother Teresa will know her better, and those who knew her only via the media will come to know her soul.
Her encounter and its message were, in the divine plan, more for us than for her. While this book is about the transformation Mother Teresa’s encounter produced in her soul, more than anything else it is about God and about the reader — about what Mother Teresa learned about God and how he sees each one of us, how he longs for intimacy with us, and for the chance to remake our lives as he did hers. More than about God’s message to Mother Teresa, this book is about God’s message through her, to you who read these lines. It is surely her hope, from her place in the kingdom, that this message laid once gently on her soul, and retold in these pages, might touch and transform your life even as it did hers.
“The experience of 10th September is [something] so intimate….” 8
—St. Teresa of Calcutta
Four
A Message Discovered
First Encounter
I can never forget August 17, 1972; it was the day Mother Teresa would change my life. I had gotten up that morning knowing nothing about her. I had never seen her face, never heard her name.
I had recently arrived in Rome to begin theological studies and, booklover that I am, found my way, almost immediately off the plane, to one of the large bookstores near St. Peter’s Square. While browsing in the upstairs English section, my gaze fell on the cover of one particular book. Suddenly, my attention, and my whole being it seemed, was seized by the image looking back at me from this book. There, on the cover of this small paperback was the face of Mother Teresa — though at the time I had no idea who it was. Her countenance seemed somehow alive and engaging, almost three-dimensional. There was a goodness in her face, a kindness in her gaze, something appealing and deeply soul-soothing that was tugging at deep places in my spirit, places rarely touched. I felt as if she were looking through me, drawing me; and I found that I could not, I did not want to, resist.
Still shaken by what had taken place — more like a meeting with a living person than having stumbled across a book — I picked up the tiny volume, noticed its title (Something Beautiful for God, by Malcolm Muggeridge), paid for it, and made my way outside. I sat down at the bus stop, lost in thought, drinking in the goodness radiating from her countenance, reflected in page after page of photos depicting her work in the slums of Calcutta.
Who was this woman? How had she managed, in an instant, to touch the deepest part of me? How had she suddenly brought me to the end of a lifelong search, when I wasn’t even aware that I was searching? How had her photo on the cover of a book brought me face-to-face with divinity, and stirred up in me a new hope in what was best in mankind, and in myself? If it took the rest of my life, I was determined to find out.
Such was my first encounter, mediated by a book, with the woman who had already changed so many lives, and was about to change my own.
Journey of Discovery
That first vicarious encounter launched me on a personal quest: I was determined to discover what it was that I had seen in her — and more, to learn what had made her who she was. How had Mother Teresa become Mother Teresa? My hope was that the goodness I saw in her might somehow be reproduced, in myself and others. I reasoned that if her secret was understood, those who admired her around the world might have a better chance of emulating her.
But to begin my quest I needed direction. I needed a starting point.
I began by approaching the Sisters and Brothers of the Missionaries of Charity stationed there in Rome. From them I learned that the key to understanding Mother Teresa lay in the two simple words she placed on the wall of her chapels around the world — Jesus’ words from the cross: “I thirst” (Jn 19:28).
In each of her chapels I had visited in Rome, or seen in books depicting her work, there were always those same words written large beneath the cross. Carved in wood, painted on plaster, or cut from paper, the same mysterious words spoke silently of some great truth that had apparently been Mother Teresa’s anchor and inspiration.
At the time, none of the biographies of Mother Teresa ventured to guess where, when, or why these words had entered her soul with such force; why she continued to place them so prominently for all to see; or what exactly they represented for her. While no one disputed their importance, their meaning in Mother Teresa’s spirituality was not clear, even to the authors who lauded her most. Were these words part of some longstanding devotion? Did they come out of her early religious upbringing, or her training in Loreto? Or did they represent some personal, even mystical experience — since she was obviously a woman of deep prayer. Could it be that, unbeknown to all, she was not only a missionary but also a mystic?
I had already learned, both from reading and from the Sisters in Rome, that the inspiration for Mother Teresa’s work with the poor had come from an extraordinary grace she received on a train
