Genesis 1:1-2:3
2 Corinthians 13:(5-10)11-14
Matthew 28:16-20
Psalm 150 or Canticle 2 or 13
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 27, 1910, in what is now Skopje, Macedonia. In 1928 she joined a religious order. Before long, she was sent to India to do missionary work and she began teaching in Calcutta. She had a dream of working with the city's poorest people and in 1948 she was given permission to leave the Convent and work right in the heart of the city's worst slums for the poorest of the poor! In that year, she also became an Indian citizen.
In 1950, she founded a new religious order call the Missionaries of Charity. This order provides food for the needy and runs schools, hospitals, orphanages, youth centers and shelters for lepers and the dying poor. It now has branches in 50 Indian cities and 30 other countries.
In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a most prestigious international award given to only a select few in the world who work for peace.
By now, you have probably figured out that I am talking about Mother Teresa who died on September 5, 1997. Her legacy and her work though continues throughout the world.
She fully understood the Great Commission in today's Gospel of Mathew - "Go therefore to all nations and make them my disciples; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all I have commanded you. I will be with you always to the end of time."
Mother Teresa didn't live out the Great Commission by forcing her religion down the throats of the poor, by forcing them to be baptized or to become Christian. She lived out the Great Commission and her understanding of the Trinity by living and working in friendship and communion with others. Hers was a life similar to that of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God in Three Persons. Each one of us has his or her own existence/personality distinct from all others. However, we become more and more ourselves by living in communion with others, intimately united, not in spite but because of our diversity. The Holy Trinity is therefore the highest, and most ennobling model of life in the human community.
Listen to Mother Teresa's own words:*
It is not enough for us to say: I love God but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God
and you don't love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, and with whom you live? And so this is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt. It hurt Jesus to love us, it hurt him. And to make sure we remember his great love he made himself the bread of life to satisfy our hunger for his love. Our hunger for God, because we have been created for that love. We have been created in his image. We have been created to love and be loved, and then he has become man to make it possible for us to love as he loved us. He makes himself the hungry one - the naked one - the homeless one - the sick one - the one in prison - the lonely one - the unwanted one - and he says: You did it to me. Hungry for our love, and this is the hunger of our poor people. This is the hunger that you and I must find, it may be in our own home.
I never forget an opportunity I had in visiting a home where they had all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them in an institution and forgotten them. And I went there, and I saw in that home they had everything, beautiful things, but everybody was looking towards the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on their face. And I turned to the Sister and I asked: How is that? How is it that the people they have everything here, why are they all looking towards the door, why are they not smiling? I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile, and she said: This is nearly every day, they are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten, and see - this is where love comes. That poverty comes right there in our own home, even neglect to love. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried, and these are difficult days for everybody. Are we there, are we there to receive them, is the mother there to receive her child? ( Have we reached out to love the lonely even in our own families? Have we visited friends and relatives in nursing homes?)
The poor people are very great people. They can teach us some many beautiful things. These are people who maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home where to live, but they are great people. The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition - and I told the Sisters: You take care of the other three, I take of this one that looked worse. So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said two words only: Thank you - and she died.
I could not help but examine my conscience before her, and I asked what would I say if I was in her place. And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself, I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more - she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face. As that man whom we picked up from the sewer, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home. He said: "I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for." And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel - this is the greatness of our people. And that is why we believe what Jesus had said: I am hungry - I was naked - I was homeless - I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for - and you did it to me. ( What have we done for the poor in Little Falls and our communities?)
There is so much suffering, so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty - how much we do it does not matter, because he is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving. ( How much love is there in our families? How much do we show our love to our family members?)
Some time ago in Calcutta we had great difficulty in getting sugar, and I don't know how the word got around to the children, and a little boy of four years old, Hindu boy, went home and told his parents: I will not eat sugar for three days, I will give my sugar to Mother Teresa for her children. After three days his father and mother brought him to our home. I had never met them before, and this little one could scarcely pronounce my name, but he knew exactly what he had come to do. He knew that he wanted to share his love.
And so here I am talking with you - I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people. And find out about your next-door neighbor - do you know who they are? I had the most extraordinary experience with a Hindu family who had eight children. A gentleman came to our house and said: Mother Teresa, there is a family with eight children, they had not eaten for so long - do something. So I took some rice and I went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shinning with hunger - I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And she took the rice, she divided the rice, and she went out. When she came back I asked her - where did you go, what did you do? And she gave me a very simple answer: They are hungry also. What struck me most was that she knew - and who are they, a Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring more rice that evening because I wanted them to enjoy the joy of sharing. But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy with their mother because she had the love to give. And you see this is where love begins - at home. ( What have we done for the hungry of Little Falls?)
Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society -that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult. Our Sisters are working amongst that kind of people in the West. So you must pray for us that we may be able to be that good news, but we cannot do that without you, you have to do that here in your country. You must come to know the poor, maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own home, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each other and that smile is the beginning of love. (Are we the "Good News" in Little Falls?)
The other day I received 15 dollars from a man who has been on his back for twenty years, and the only part that he can move is his right hand. And the only companion that he enjoys is smoking. And he said to me; I do not smoke for one week, and I send you this money. It must have been a terrible sacrifice for him, but see how beautiful, how he shared, and with that money I bought bread and I gave to those who are hungry with a joy on both sides, he was giving and the poor were receiving. This is something that you and I - it is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others. And let it be as it was for Jesus. Let us love one another as he loved us. Let us love Him with undivided love. And the joy of loving Him and each other - let us give now. Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts. And share that joy with all that we come in touch with. And that radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor that we meet, Christ in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive. Let us make that one point: That no child will be unwanted, and also that we meet each other always with a smile, especially when it is difficult to smile.*
We probably aren't going to be of the stature of a Mother Teresa but we can reach out in friendship to those most unlike us, we can work in a local food shelf or volunteer to work and visit the lonely in a Nursing home. We are Jesus' hands, feet and heart in the world. We may just be the only person someone who doesn't know Christ may meet. What will they see and more importantly what will they see us doing?
Do you think that by just extending ourselves in friendship to those in need we could transform not only their lives but also our own? How far are we willing to go to do this as Christ's followers in this broken world?
Amen.
*Mother Teresa's words from her Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1979, Press Release