. . . For the second time, Mother Teresa tried to introduce a hopeful note, and she spoke about the Hindu custom of always putting a handful of rice at the door of the poor. The young woman was exasperated; “Mother Teresa, when will you wake up? Calcutta is a hell of corruption.”
There were a few seconds of painful silence. Mother Teresa remained quite calm, looked the woman right in the eye and said, “I know very well there is corruption in Calcutta, but I also know there is good, and I have decided to see the good.” Mother Teresa was not so naive as not to see evil. Instead it was a deliberate act, a conscious decision to live in love and hope. And it was also a very conscious decision to believe in the good of people.
The Sisters used to joke that Mother Teresa would even make excuses for the devil. Again and again she emphasized that you shouldn’t listen to all the negative stories about anyone. It is much better to pray for them. She once remarked, “One sin that I have never had to confess is that I judged someone.”
Clearly she had very thoroughly learned the lesson that her mother had taught her three children in Skopje. At home whenever the children grumbled about a teacher the mother would turn the electricity off. As she succinctly explained, “I’m not going to pay for electricity for children who badmouth people.”
Mother Teresa wanted to help people. not accuse or judge them. So she helped the poor, the drug addicts and the AIDS patients. She helped Hindus and Muslims and also Christians and atheists when they were dying. Her love knew no boundaries; she made no distinctions as to race or religion, social status or world view. In that way she showed us what Christian love of our neighbor is supposed to be.
It is a mystery to me how Mother Teresa coped with all the accusations and charges that were leveled at her, especially from England and also by many German authors. She herself once gave us the answer when she spoke about dealing with insults: “If someone accuses you, ask yourself first: Is he right? If he is right, go and apologize to him. If he’s not right, then take the insult you have received in both hands. Don’t let it go but seize the opportunity and give it to Jesus as a sacrifice. Be glad that you have something valuable to give Him.”
She was conscious every moment of the fact that God is love, that this love embraces all people, and that she herself and all of us are only fragile instruments in God’s hand. That is why she used to say, “Let us pray that we don’t spoil God’s work.” She was firmly convinced that all the good that happens is God’s work!
As AIDS increasingly became a topic in the media there were certainly voices claiming that the new plague was a punishment from God for sin, or at least in some sense a consequence for sin. So I listened with great interest when someone asked Mother Teresa, “Mother Teresa, is the AIDS epidemic the result of sin?”
Mother Teresa looked the questioner in the eyes and said, “I, Mother Teresa, am a sinner. We are all sinners. And we all need God’s mercy.” I recalled Mother Teresa’s remark: “One sin that I have never had to confess is that I judged someone.”
When we were in Prague, Mother Teresa told me about founding the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in New York on October 31, 1984. This, her fifth religious congregation, consisted of priests who would serve as Missionaries of Charity. At first there were only five. They all made a special promise to never say a disparaging word about anyone, either within the congregation or out of it. Mother Teresa commented, “As priests you must be there exclusively for Jesus. No one and nothing must come between you and Jesus.” Then she gave me another bit of pastoral advice. In order to renew a parish, it is good to have, as Jesus did,” a team of eight, ten, or twelve people who really want to bring Christ into the parish.”
. . . . In Puducherry, that part of India that was once a French colony and where French missionaries had worked, a woman once told me, “The missionaries brought us a new religion, a third religion besides Buddhism and Hinduism. Mother Teresa brought the Love of Christ.” ~ From the book, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a Personal Portrait by Leo Maasuburg, Abridged Edition, p. 95-97, Ignatius Press–Augustine Institute, San Francisco, Greenwood Village, Colorado
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
