It was 26 August 1910, precisely 102 years ago, that the world received God’s magnificent messenger of charity. Her birth name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, however the world knew her as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, diminutive in stature but a giant in the art of God’s love.
In order to appreciate Mother Teresa’s spiritual legacy, Father Joseph Michael Langford, the priest who co-founded with her the Missionaries of Charity priestly order, gave an interesting interview on 2 September 2010, just 46 days before he died on 18 October. Father Langford is also the author of Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire, which reveals the inspiration that made Mother Teresa’s work literally explode, as well as the details of the call she received from the Lord in 1946 to found the Missionaries of Charity.
Undoubtedly, Mother Teresa stood out from the thousands of missionaries around the globe who sacrifice their lives to help the poor and sick. For Father Langford, one of the elements that did set her apart was Mother’s “tremendous love for God and neighbour, in darkness, for 50 years”. In fact, “her apostolate − to work alone in the streets of Calcutta, as a religious, outside her convent − was completely new in the 1950s and 1960s. But this was entirely God’s plan, in every detail. She only did what God asked of her. He directed her in all, even in what she was to wear. For his own greater purposes, some of which we might surmise, as with Francis it was God who set her on the world stage and holds her there, as her stature only continues to grow”.
For those who never had the blessing of meeting Mother Teresa, what was it like to talk to her, to accompany her, to watch her? Father Langford said that Mother communicated God’s warmth wherever she went. People in her presence felt that God loves and accepts them as they are.
Moreover, people felt God’s presence in her “often to the point of tears,” the priest added. When you encountered her, even though you were in a crowd, you could definitely feel an immediate intimacy with her.
As if you were the one and only person in her world. In Father Langford’s words, “You felt drawn to God, embraced and cherished by God, not unlike what people must have felt around Jesus.”
In many people’s eyes, Mother Teresa is that world-renowned nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her invaluable humanitarian work. But this is only a superficial appreciation of the spiritual strength of this great woman. According to her co-founder, Mother Teresa was “a mystic with her sleeves rolled up”. She was a real mother for everyone, “always ready to support you, ready to see the good in you, to overlook your faults, to encourage you. She never seemed to tire of hearing from you, or speaking with you”. Furthermore, Mother “was someone who always reserved a special place in her heart for all those who came near to her”. Father Langford said she managed to change his life without even trying and set him on a totally different path, which he never regretted taking but followed it joyfully till the end.
Most of all, Father Langford recalled with utmost gratitude that Mother Teresa “radiated both the presence of Our Lady, with whom she had a deep, unique, relationship … as well as the presence of her Son, who had sent her to ‘be his light.’ She was a doorway into God’s heart − from us to him, and from him to us − a pathway that was accessible and observable and inviting to all”.
Mother Teresa’s spiritual legacy can be summed up in her famous self-description: “a pencil in God’s hand, to write his love letter to the world”. The dynamic content of that letter written on her life’s pages was, in Father’s Langford words, “the mystery of God’s infinite thirst for us… God’s infinite longing to love and be loved”.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
SAN GWANN