I have said to the Missionaries of Charity more times than they have probably
wanted to hear, “There are many Mother Teresas.” I believe
that firmly. In fact, I want to suggest today that the reason for her
beatification (or canonization) is precisely that not only can she be imitated,
but that she has been. She offers us a model of what we can do, and
perhaps what we ought to do and today’s event is a reminder that our God
is pleased with this kind of life.
When I say that there are many persons whose lives are like Mother’s, I
think for example of the sister who has worked for fifty years with the children
who are rag-pickers in Cairo, one of the most difficult cities in the world in
which to live. This sister has actually finally found others to work with
her who are operating a Montessori school for the youngest of these babies when
they have finished their work for the day.
I, think, too, of the earliest Sisters of St. Joseph who came to India and to
Nagpur to care for the orphaned children of plague victims, and this in our own
Thana more than 150 years ago. I think of Mother Gertrude of the Salesian
Missionaries of Mary Immaculate who opened their home for the most indigent of
our peoples in the camel stable of the then Rajah of Nagpur. There are so
many more that I risk dishonouring some of them by mentioning only these
few. And I have not even mentioned the men who came here to India and to
Nagpur itself and lived in horrendous situations to bring the Good News to this
part of the world. But I want to make a point.
I think we must face the fact that if there were no Malcolm Muggeridge the
world would not know of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. It was his film,
“Something Beautiful for God”, which Mother herself named, which
brought her to the world’s attention. Surely most of us are
delighted that that happened. Knowing of her work has brought incredible
sums of money and supplies to our country alone and to the others in which the
Missionaries of Charity work because donors feel secure that their contributions
will go for that which they intended. The poorest of our poor have
benefited in many ways from these contributions and our priests and religious
have been invited to look at what they are doing in light of Mother’s
successes. Her inspiration has been a boon not only to the developing
nations but also to those on the economic, social, and political margins in
First World Nations.
You probably know that this pope has beatified and canonized more persons
than any of his predecessors. Some would say too many but a recent article
in The Tablet from London, England, suggested in fact that we
are not canonizing enough saints! The article was trying to make the point
that I am that this church process leaves out many who should be celebrated when
singling out just one of a group or kind for their heroic lives. This is
precisely why we celebrate All Saints’ Day, a reminder that there are many
with God whose lives deserve emulation. I can believe that many of us
would say that members of our own families lived heroically and in our minds are
saints, canonized or not.
I knew Mother Teresa personally. I was in Calcutta in 1947 when word
began to go around that there was a crazy woman, a former sister, who was using
a wheelbarrow to take sick people to the hospital and insisting that they be
treated. My Sodality associates and I began to work with her and from our
efforts and those of others, Nirmal Hriday, her first home for the dying
emerged. It was a special privilege for someone like myself raised in an
Anglo-Indian environment from the age of eight, to learn about the rest of the
people in my country. Indeed, I expected that my own priesthood would go
in the direction Mother’s life had taken but Fate or Providence, along
with my consent to opportunities offered, determined otherwise.
At Mother’s death several years ago, I was indisposed and was unable to
be with you at the celebration of her life. But I did send my thoughts
which were kindly read to you by another. At that time I asked you to
rejoice in Mother’s gifts to us, indeed to the whole world, but also to
remember, by her own admission, that she was doing one-half of the work that
needs to be done. She named her congregation the Missionaries of
Charity deliberately. She knew that Christian life calls to us
justice and mercy but determined that her efforts were to be confined to
charity. The rehabilitative dimensions of mission she chose deliberately
to leave to others. She was quoted as saying, “You go to your
meetings while I will sit by the beds of the poor.” Saint or not, it
is surely too harsh a judgment on those who give their lives to social justice
issues and concerns.
What Mother has determined her sisters are to do, and what Sister Nirmala
after her continues to make happen, is good, and valuable, and much
needed. And when push comes to shove, charity probably must take
precedence over everything else. But justice issues must also be important
to those of us who truly make an option for the poor. That option is to
end their poverty of body, mind, and spirit, by helping them to help
themselves, by accessing their wisdom, by finding out what their needs and wants
are and meeting them. We need to learn to come not with our package plans
and pre-conceived ideas about what people need who are being dealt with
unjustly. We need to come to them to access their wisdom, enhance their
skills, and to learn from and with them. This is justice, this is
animation, this is the empowerment of peoples. When we have
“missionaries of justice” as well as Missionaries of Charity, we
will be working on the justice and compassion to which our God calls us.
Our God’s own nature is loving-kindness. Our God’s call to us
is to change structures that oppress and demean human beings while helping those
who are the victims of oppression and injustice. We need to be doing both
if we are living in the authentic spirit of Jesus, the human face of God.
So, while we celebrate today the official proclamation that Mother is with
God and that her life and efforts are truly in the spirit of Jesus, and deserve
our attention and imitation, let us also celebrate all of those whom we know who
also live such lives, official saints or not. Let us commit ourselves to
the works of charity and of justice, determined to wipe away every tear
and also to end the reasons for the tears in the first place.
Leobard D’Souza was consecrated coadjutor bishop of Jabalpur, India, by
Pope Paul VI in 1964 at the Eucharistic Congress in Bombay. Ordained a
priest in 1956, he studied at Propaganda Fide in Rome. He returned to
India in 1957 and worked as a parish priest in Junwani, a rural mission in
Jabalpur, but after nine months was assigned as private secretary to the papal
pro-nuncio in India, Archbishop James Knox. In 1962 he went to University
College Dublin to read history in preparation for becoming principal at St.
Aloysius School in Jabalpur. In 1964 he was working on his thesis at the
British Museum when he was called to become coadjutor of Jabalpur. He
became ordinary of the diocese that same year and in 1975 became archbishop of
Nagpur, India, a position from which he retired in 1998 because of ill
health. He served as vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of
India and for eight years was chair of Caritas India. He also served on
several national and international committees including those concerned with
labor, immigration and refugees, and catechesis. He resides now at St.
Charles Seminary, Nagpur, where he is professor of church history, and conducts
the pastoral workshop for deacons. His regular weekend ministry is in the
small village of Peti Chua. He also conducts retreats and seminars and
provides a variety of tuitions for male and female religious.