With the fascinating melody of the great song written by the former I Pooh singer Riccardo Fogli, Storie di Tutti giorni (Everyday stories) in the back ground, I worshipfully contemplated the life of my birth mate who the Church officially canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta earlier this month.
Hers is a captivating story. It was not a story of those great heroes that history books speak about. She did not set out to conquer entire peoples under compulsion, thus creating more poverty while enriching her pockets. No! Mother heard the powerful cry of the dying Jesus on the Cross, “I thirst” (John 19:28). She responded with great generosity to that call.
In his canonization homily on Blessed Mother Teresa, Pope Francis not only recognized this heroic generosity which impelled this newly canonized saint to give herself to the poorest of the poor but prayed that we might be changed by it! “May this tireless worker of mercy help us increasingly to understand that our only criterion for action is gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race or religion.”
This gratuitous love makes us more human because it takes us to our inherent calling of being God’s sons and daughters. Such a love, if it truly wants to bear abundant good fruit, needs to be soaked by joy! As the Apostle rightly reminds us: “Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7).
Was Mother Teresa a cheerful giver? In practically every photo depicting her strong personality one can see her infectious smile. It was a smile that came directly from the heart of the Merciful Jesus. It was a smile that filled our shattered world with the revolutionary gentleness of God’s unfathomable mercy. Yes! I love to call my birthday mate the Apostle of God’s smile!
Dwelling on this point the Holy Father said: “Mother Teresa loved to say, ‘Perhaps I don’t speak their language, but I can smile’. Then he exhorted us to be, like Mother Teresa, apostles of God’s smile, in a world where genuine smiles are becoming so rare especially in the richer parts of our globe. “Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer. In this way, we will open up opportunities of joy and hope for our many brothers and sisters who are discouraged and who are in need of understanding and tenderness.”
Personally speaking, my birthday mate is of great inspiration to me simply by recalling the Nobel Prize speech she delivered on 11 December 1979. In that bold speech Mother Teresa did not mince her words. She blamed abortion as the breaker of peace, calling it “the greatest destroyer of peace”. But why is this so? Saint Teresa explained: “Abortion is a direct war, a direct killing, a direct murder by the mother herself. And we read it in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: ‘Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you – I have carved you in the palm of my hand’. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that an unborn child has been carved in the hand of God.
“And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible – but even if she could forget – ‘I will not forget you’... And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me is to kill you and for you to kill me – there is nothing inbetween.”
You and I admire Mother Teresa’s indefatigable strength to bear witness to that unending light which only the Divine Mercy can give to our suffering world. As Pope Francis said, she was “committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that ‘the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, and the most vulnerable’”.
If we really want to honour Saint Teresa of Calcutta what are we doing to protect human life in all its stages? Are we sincerely protecting the unborn like my birthday mate used to do?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
Marsa