On Sept. 4, Pope Francis is planning to announce that the modern world’s most ardent apostle of compassion for the disadvantaged in our society, Mother Teresa, will be recognized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
The epic event is an inspiration for everyone, everywhere, who seeks answers to the important questions of why we are here and how to live a moral life.
Sources are divided over the number of saints previously deemed extraordinarily holy, virtuous and worthy of great veneration, as they were determined in a rather spontaneous process and the number of those designated run into the thousands.
It was not until the Middle Ages that the authority for the canonization of potential saints became more limited and regulated by the Vatican.
Under the rules of the Catholic Church, the road to sainthood is a long one: (1) after death, the Vatican can deem a person a “servant of God;” (2) further scrutiny of a candidate’s virtue and approval leads to the title of “Venerable;” (3) then, two miracles must be verified before a candidate can be bestowed with the title of “saint.”
Arguably the most revered religious figure in world history is Jesus of Nazareth, whose foremost mission in his short ministry was unconditional compassion for the abandoned and the destitute in society, through faith and love.
As chronicled in the first four books of the New Testament (Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) Jesus encouraged selflessness and humility, peace and the avoidance of violence, and invited everyone to honor his fellow man — and these righteous pursuits would be rewarded “with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 16:19).
Unfortunately, it can be suggested that proselytizing by early church fathers redefined and altered Jesus’ pure and simple message by adding the ethic of fear towards those who lacked faith.
Jesus’ untainted words and deeds became the inspiration for a Roman Catholic nun from Yugoslavia who moved to Calcutta, India, where she started a religious community called the Missionaries of Charity to “represent the poor of the world, the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, the alcoholics, the people thrown away by society, people who have forgotten what human love is, or the human touch” (MT, Where There Is Love, There Is God).
Mother Teresa’s unequivocal devotion to the Gospel lessons of serving society’s most needy was acutely illustrated when she wrote:
“Without our suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption. Jesus wanted to help us by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony and death” (MT, to MC Sisters, 1961).
Expanding on the time honored parables of Jesus’ ministry, Mother Teresa adopted many metaphors that defined her lofty goal of improving people’s self esteem through love.
She redefined the word “poor” to include not only those who lacked material wealth but those who had forgotten what love was and had no one to love them.
The “hunger,” “homelessness,” and “nakedness” Jesus spoke of (Matthew 25: 35-36) was redefined by Mother Teresa to suggest that hunger was the want of love, homelessness was a rejection from society as unwanted, and nakedness was not only a literal lack of clothes but a loss of dignity.
And the use of the word “thirst” (John 19:28) was considered to mean the thirsting for people’s love, thirsting for their kindness and compassion — not a physical thirst for water — with the “aim to quench this infinite thirst of a God made man” (MT, Come Be My Light).
The 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Mother Teresa in acknowledgement of her “constructive efforts to do away with hunger and poverty, and to ensure for mankind a safer and better world community in which to develop.”
There is much the world can learn from this saint whose life was passionately devoted to find the holiness in our lives, guided by the compassion of love.
As Mother Teresa wrote, “Love is a one-way street. It always moves away from the self in the direction of others. Love is the ultimate gift of our selves to others. When we stop giving we stop loving, when we stop loving we stop growing, and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfillment; we will never open out to receive the life of God. It is through love that we encounter God.” (MT, Where There Is Love, There Is God).
Dean Chavooshian is the award-winning New York City author of “The Pursuit of Wisdom: A Chronological Inquiry of the World’s Most Influential Seekers of Wisdom in the Fields of Theology, Philosophy, and Science.”