It is great living in the rectory with two other priests because every once in a while they give you a good homily idea. This one is sponsored by Father Jeremy. We were talking earlier in the week about these readings. We came to a conclusion. Father Jeremy said, “If you hear these readings, it is Mother Teresa, inside and out.”
We started to think about it more and realized what an amazing privilege it has been for us to live in a time that a Saint actually lived. Next Sunday, a week from today, Mother Teresa is going to be canonized. She is going to be declared a Saint. I never met her personally, however my retreat master (the monsignor that I go to every year) was her Retreat Director for years. He directed Mother Teresa and all of her nuns for years. His name is Monsignor Esseff. Monsignor Esseff is about this tall. He looks like a 95-year-old Yoda!
He is just an amazing, tremendously powerful spiritual man. Every time I go and see him he tells me another story about Mother Teresa. Once I was with him, and he said he directed the last retreat of Mother Teresa three months before she died. He is not very tall. He said, “You know, I was directing Mother Teresa and she is short you know, she is like less than 5 foot,” He said, “She would always pound her chest and she would say `Look at what God is doing with nothing.`” She had this profound humility. Sometimes when she would tell about all of the amazing things that she was doing, people would get annoyed with her. She realized that. Once there was a seminarian that was rolling his eyes because Mother Teresa said, “You know we started this. We started this home for the homeless. We were in all these different countries.” She caught him rolling his eyes, and she went up to him and said, “This is not me. This is all from God.” She had true humility that everything that she did was from God.
We hear in The Reading from the Psalm, which was sung so beautifully, “God in Your goodness You have made a home for the poor.” Think about Mother Teresa and how she did that all over the world. She made these homes for the poor. As a priest and a seminarian, I have been able to visit many of them. I have stayed in some of them. They are just amazing places! In every chapel that you walk in, there is always a crucifix. Next to the crucifix is written “I thirst,” that was her call. She had this great thirst of Christ to serve the poor. She gave her Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 1979, the year I was born. She talked about this idea of making a home for the poor.
“I never forget the opportunity I had in visiting a nursing home where they had all these old parents. Sons and daughters had put them in an institution and had forgotten them,” said Mother Teresa. She described how she went there. This was a place in America. She saw in that home that they had many beautiful things. However, everybody was looking towards the door and she did not see a single person with a smile on their face. She turned to her sister and asked, “How is it that people who have everything here are looking towards the door? Why aren’t they smiling? I am used to seeing a smile on our people. Even the dying ones smile,” she said.
This is happens nearly every day. They are expecting. They are hoping that a son or daughter will come and visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten. See this is where love comes from. That poverty we experience, right in our own home, we even neglect to love, right in our own home. Maybe in our own family, we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick and worried. These are difficult days for everybody. Are we there? Are we there to receive them? Is the mother there to receive her child? She goes on to say, “I was surprised in the west too, to see so many young boys and girls giving in to drugs.” This was in ’79. It’s even more relevant now.
I tried to find out why. Why is it like that? The answer was because there is no one in the family to receive them! Father and mother are so busy, they have no time. Young parents are in some institution and the child takes a backseat and gets involved with something. These are things that break peace, and we are talking about peace. I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing, a direct murder by the mother herself. We read in the Sacred Scripture where God says very clearly, “Even if a mother forgets her child, I will not forget you. I have carved you in the palm of My hands.” We are carved in the palm of God’s hand. So close to Him, that the unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. That is what strikes me the most. The beginning of that sentence that even if a mother could forget something impossible, God will not forget you. God will never forget you.”
She goes on to say that, “I believe that we are not social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of many, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world, for we are touching the Body of Christ twenty four hours a day. Just think about that for yourselves. Everything you do in your day, every time you give your child a hug, every time you embrace your spouse, every time you shake a coworker’s hand, you are touching the Body of Christ.” She says, “We have twenty four hours in His presence. You too, try to bring that presence of God in your family, for the family that prays together stays together. I think that in our families we don’t need bombs and guns to bring about peace. We just need to get together, love one another, and bring that peace and joy that will strengthen our homes and our worlds.”
Here I am talking with you. She is talking to you right now. “I want you to find the poor, right here, right in your own home first, and begin to love there. Be that good news to your own people, and find out about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor? I know well that you have not given from your abundance, but you have given until it hurts you. With this prize that I have received, is the prize of peace. I am going to try to make a home for many people who have no home because I believe love begins in the home. If we create a home for the poor, I think more and more love will spread. To the poor in our own family first, and our country and in our worlds. To be able to do this, we must be woven in prayer. You must come to know the poor. Maybe our people have material things, everything, but I think if we look into our own homes, how difficult we find it is to love, and to smile at each other, and that smile is the beginning of love. Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. Once we begin to love, naturally we will want to do something.”
Still today, Mother Teresa leaves us with three challenges. First, we are called to be people of prayer. Monsignor Esseff told me that every morning before the nuns would even get up, Mother Teresa would spend two hours in Adoration. She wanted to spend two hours in Adoration. She would spend the rest of her day serving. Even above service, she placed prayer. First of all, do we pray every day? Are you spending a significant amount of time in prayer every day? Secondly, realize we can experience Christ twenty-four hours a day. Every person we encounter, every person we see, every person we touch, they are the Body of Christ. In our service, we can serve Christ. Finally, ultimately is humility, as we heard in the First Reading and the Second Reading. We are called to be humble. I want to end with Mother Teresa’s quote about humility. “Humility is the mother of all virtues, purity, charity, and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted, and ardent. If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise, nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed, you will not be discouraged. If they call you a Saint, you will not put yourself on a pedestal. Mother Teresa is indeed being raised from being the lowest on this Earth, from being the most humble, to now being declared a Saint. Hopefully one day too, if we pray, if we serve, and if we do it with humility, we will join her in being Saints in the Kingdom of God.
