But even if none of the gloom gathering on our horizon comes to pass, we will still need grace and courage to face the fact that our present tenor of life cannot continue indefinitely. In years to come, we all will know unforeseen suffering; we all will taste deprivation, in health if not in finance. Whatever our present circumstances, a share of personal tragedy will one day touch us all. The normal course of life will bring, along with blessings, disease to our children, accidents to loved ones, responsibility for bed-ridden relatives or a cancer-ridden spouse, loss of employment or loss of relationship, sudden reversals of fortune, or the untimely death of those we cherish. We will all need to find other sources of happiness, purpose, and fulfillment, beyond possessions and ease and protecting the status quo. In the end, the very process of our aging will itself frame the geography of our personal Calcutta.
Who will teach us to deal with such trials when they come? What solutions will there be for us, besides escape or despair, the hollow promises of a prosperity gospel, or the cosmic secrets of “attracting abundance”? Mother Teresa’s secret was quite another — more robust, reliable, and real. It was born of the most powerful force in the universe — the only One to have faced death, and overcome it forever.
Over the darkness of our inevitable night, her light shines — no longer only as “saint,” but as model and teacher, thanks to her own graced path through the night. She has shown us what the human spirit can accomplish, clinging to God, no matter the odds. As the years go by, her challenges will seem less foreign, and her solutions more meaningful, even vital. Our common human plight has become our bond with her, and our invitation to enroll in her school of the heart.
Turning the Darkness to Light
We are each called and equipped by God not only to survive our personal Calcutta, but to serve there — to contribute to those around us whose individual Calcuttas intersect our own, just as Mother Teresa did, if on a different scale. If she could face the worst of human suffering in such immense proportions — and do so despite bearing her own pain — then there must be a way that we can do the same in the lesser Calcutta that is ours. We must never forget, distracted by the demi-problems of our routine existence, just how important our one life is in the plan of God, and the great amount of good we can yet contribute.
How important can our one small, unspectacular life be? Consider this: the good that each of us can accomplish, even with limited resources and restricted reach, not even a Mother Teresa could achieve. The family, friends, and coworkers whom we alone can touch, with our unique and unrepeatable mix of gifts and qualities, not even Mother Teresa could reach. No one else on the planet, and no one else in history, possesses the same network of acquaintances and the same combination of talents and gifts as each one of us does — as you do.
There is no need, then, to travel to far-off lands to contribute to Mother Teresa’s mission, or to follow her example. Wherever we are, with whatever talents and relationships God has entrusted us, we are each called not to do what a Mother Teresa did, but to do as she did — to love as she loved in the Calcutta of our own life.
Mother Teresa’s Secret
The inner fire that saw Mother Teresa through the night will be her contribution for generations to come. Here is the wisdom of a Nobel Prize laureate and a saint. Here is her recipe for happiness in the midst of want; for living for others despite one’s own needs; for hoping in the face of setbacks; for peace within, while conflict and struggle reign without; for giving our time and our love, even while our own health and supports are wrenched away. Mother Teresa has taught us the divine alchemy that turns our personal hardships into compassion for others; our lack of material goods into wealth of spirit; and, should it come to that, the loss of our standard of living into the chance to become what ease and abundance would never have allowed us to be.
Mother Teresa’s lessons will prepare us, as no political plan or economic program could, to live through our trials with grace, and to turn them into blessing for others. If this simple, humanly un-extraordinary woman could have filled Calcutta’s slums with such love and energy and ingenuity, then we can learn to do the same in our life, no matter what may come.
“Try to deepen your understanding of these two words, ‘Thirst of God.’ ” 23
— St. Teresa of Calcutta
Seven
“I Thirst”:
A Window on the Heart of God
The Good News Retold
Who of us would not have been overwhelmed by such an experience as Mother Teresa had on that September day in 1946 — having encountered a God who not only accepts us, but who actually longs for us, even as we sleep, and even when we wander.
Mother Teresa encountered a God who yearns for us — exactly as we are, even the worst among us; a God who wishes to draw us into his embrace, regardless of past failings or present weakness. She came to understand a cornerstone of God’s mercies, of his way of dealing with us, in realizing that we each need more love than we deserve.24 Has God not indeed shown us his greatest love precisely when we deserved it least, from the tree of Eden to the tree of Calvary, and beyond?
But lest we make the mistake of seeing God’s unconditional longing as a license for laxity or complacency, there is another corollary key to Mother Teresa’s understanding of God’s plan. His longing for us is not the end of the story. The same God who loves us as we are also loves us too much to leave us as we are. This is why he urged Mother Teresa to labor not only for the salvation of the poor, but for their full sanctification — that is, for their complete transformation; for nothing less than the fullness of their potential and dignity in God. Salvation is the beginning, but there is always more this side of heaven, and God’s thirst for us will always draw us on to a still deeper union with him. Rather than being the domain of the few, holiness — the free gift of ultimate transformation worked by divine love, and the final goal of the divine thirst — is open to one and all. In fact, the needier we are, and the farther away, the more God strives to draw us into his kingdom, where the “first will be last, and the last first” (Mk 10:31).
The Good News of the gospel is laced throughout Mother Teresa’s message — tidings that may seem radically new, unheard of, hard to believe, especially for those who have yet to personally encounter God’s love. Her message may indeed be radical, but it is far from new. The mystery of the divine longing has always been there, hidden in the books of the Old Testament, and woven throughout every page of the New.
If this is so, then why have we not heard it before? Perhaps because we tend to hold to ideas about God that reflect our own suppositions and fears, more than God’s self-revelation. We reduce God to our own dimensions, ascribing to him our own reactions and responses, especially our own petty and conditional kind of love, and so end up believing in a God cast in our own image and likeness.
But the true God, the living God, is entirely “other.” Precisely from this radical otherness derives the inscrutable and transcendent nature of divine love — for which our limited human love is but a distant metaphor. God’s love is much more than our human love simply multiplied and expanded. God’s love for us will ever be mystery: unfathomable, awesome, entirely beyond human expectation.
Precisely because God’s love is something “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (1 Cor 2:9), Mother Teresa meditated on it continuously, and encouraged us to do the same, to continue plumbing this mystery more deeply. To this end she invites us: “Try to deepen your understanding of these two words, ‘Thirst of God.’ ”25
Seeing Through Her Eyes
If we accept Mother Teresa’s invitation to contemplate the same light she beheld on the train, we need to try to see that light, first of all, through her eyes, through the lens of her own soul,