ST. TERESA OF CALCUTTA
overcome with emotion by
the sheer holiness of
the tiny, wrinkled
74-year-old woman
who stood before
them—perched
on top of a box
so she could
reach the microphone—in her
simple blue and
white sari, the
one you’ve seen
her wear in pictures
a million times before.
To this day, the thoughts
and feelings I had on seeing her
that night are vividly etched in my memory. Recently, I expressed some of these in
a short poem. Strikingly, the effect she had
seemed to have no boundaries as to whether
you were religious or non-religious; it didn’t
seem to matter that night, or any other
time for that matter. In fact, I saw what I assumed were veteran secular reporters getting
choked up simply at the sight of her.
The late William F. Buckley Jr. many years
ago edited a book, Did You Ever See A Dream
Walking? That’s a memorable title. Well, you
could title a book about that evening with
St. Mother Teresa similarly, Did You Ever See
Holiness Walking?
I remember asking myself: How can a
plain-looking person be so attractive? It was
only years later that I could actually say I
knew the answer.
I believe that this elderly Albanian missionary nun was so beautiful because, as she
famously always said, she saw Jesus Christ in
the face of every human person that she met
and ministered to. And so, the more she saw
the image of the Lord in each human being
she encountered, the more we saw reflected
in her eyes that same poor soul she saw and
loved; that is, the beautiful face of our Savior
himself (cf. Matthew 25:31-46).
ergy on changing the “social
structures” that supposedly made and kept
people poor.
As well, why did
she concentrate
on a simplistic
(in their eyes)
person-to-person approach to
alleviating poverty? Where were
the Big Programs?
And why so much
emphasis on suffering?
That was all too . . .
Catholic.
Some even charged her with a certain
dependency on the poor: she needed them
(for her fame) and they needed her (for
their soup). Many, too, were opposed to her
pro-life stance on abortion and contraception, seeing her position as contrary to what
the poor really needed to escape poverty.
These critics interpreted her unwavering
faithfulness to Church teaching as unfaithfulness to the cause of the needy. And on
it went.
Of course, St. Teresa would say that she
wasn’t focused on poverty so much as focused on the poor. She wasn’t in love with
poverty, as one well known critic of her had
it, but with the poor. Many others had the
vocation to do the Big Stuff with the Big
Dollars and the Big Publicity. Her calling—
her mission, as she saw it—was to faithfully
serve the poor of Calcutta, India, and other
places with unconditional Christian love.
So for Mother Teresa it wasn’t just about
material goods, however important and necessary they are. And she and the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns that she
founded, didn’t neglect them. Yet her work
wasn’t simply to eradicate poverty, wonderful though that would be. Her order was
(and is) also about the “spiritual poverty,”
as she put it, that she encountered in the
secular and successful West. Her speech in
Washington, D.C., that June evening didn’t
neglect to mention this kind of poverty, so
much more difficult to eliminate because it
is rooted in the heart.
If Christians wouldn’t address spiritual
poverty, who would?
Catholic News Agency
“I saw what I
assumed were veteran
secular reporters getting
choked up simply at
the sight of her.”
person, but the effect her mere presence had
on those in attendance, myself included.
When she first appeared on stage—along
with the late Dr. Jack Wilkie, who was
then president of the NRLC Committee,
his wife Barbara, the late Jack Kemp, and
other former and current politicians—you
could literally hear a pin drop in the large
ballroom. Then, looking around me, I observed many in the audience crying and
shaking (including my future wife, Christine). It was as if the Holy Spirit had blown
through the room unannounced.
And, in a sense, he had. People were
What About the Critics?
Hard as it may be to believe, especially
for Catholics and others with a real devotion to her, not everyone was a fan of St.
Teresa. Her critics would accuse her of ignoring the “root causes” of poverty. They
would ask her why she didn’t focus her en-
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