By Francis Sunil Rosario

Kolkata, Aug 26, 2020: Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, contributed immensely to the growth of the Church and its mission.

One of her major contributions was to renew priestly spirituality through Corpus Christi Movement for the priests throughout the world. The movement is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit at a time when the world is facing many difficult challenges. Pope John Paul II approved this movement as he knew all about the movement and the depth of its spirituality.

Father Pascual Cervera is the coordinator of this movement. In July 1997, two months before Mother Teresa’s death, she had taken Father Pascual of New York Archdiocese to the Pope to seek his approval. She presented the documents to initiate Corpus Christi Movement within the Church and its mission, chiefly to renew priestly spirituality among the diocesan clergy throughout the world. It was the last gift of Mother Teresa to the Church.

This movement seeks to foster priestly holiness and the spiritual renewal of the Church. Brother priests are invited to share spiritually in the charism and spirit given by God to the universal Church through Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity. This is to be lived in the context of one’s own priestly ministry and vocation.

In a letter addressed to Mother Teresa by the Vatican, the Pope imparted his apostolic blessings on all the priests who would become a part of the movement in future. The letter says, “His Holiness prays that this initiative will bear abundant fruit for the fostering of priestly holiness and the spiritual renewal of the Church.”

To initiate this movement, Mother Teresa reflected deeply that the priests throughout the world might exercise their priestly ministry with great devotion to Our Lady and to the Blessed Sacrament. In a message given to Father Pascual, she shared her deeper longing for the priests that they become holy priests in the service of the world and the poor.

She wrote, “Jesus said, ‘I Thirst’, let us all unite and satiate His thirst for love for souls. Let us all together with Jesus fill the world with His love through our works of love especially, may the Corpus Christi inflame the love of Christ throughout the world! Let us pray – Mary Mother of Jesus be Mother to Corpus Christi help us all to be Holy and let God bless us all.”

This year has been very special for everyone due to global pandemic caused by Corona epidemic. The world has witnessed a worst type of suffering during 2020. People of all color, races, and creed have suffered similar threat to life. All are affected socially, economically, psychologically and every other way.

Due to lockdown, Mother House in Kolkata had small number of visitors to pray at her tomb. Even though the spirit to celebrate her 110th birth anniversary has been high. Her loving trust, total surrender to God and cheerfulness, the spirit of her charism lives beyond her institutions, reaching out to all people irrespective of color and creed.

The whole of Mother Teresa’s life and labor bore witness to the joy of loving, the greatness and dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully and with love, and the surpassing worth of friendship with God. Her inner experience, “the darkness.”

The “painful night” of her soul, was her biggest strength to cling to God. Humanly speaking what is a disadvantage became the source of strength for her to carry out the mission entrusted to her to satiate the thirst of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. Through the darkness she mystically participated in the thirst of Jesus, in His painful and burning longing for love, and she shared in the interior desolation of the poor.

She wanted that similar spirit might motivate all the priests throughout the world to love God and their neighbors in the respective fields of ministry, wherever they might be. The movement has more than 400 priests, most of them diocesans, from the countries of Europe, America, Latin America, some from Africa and Asian countries.

Kolkata, being the birth place of this charism and mission has its seed of the movement. Already three times, CCM organized their pilgrimage to Kolkata with retreat to enter into the spirit of Mother’s charism, “I thirst”. The last pilgrimage and retreat was organized from September 3-10, 2018.

“The purpose of the pilgrimage to Calcutta was to walk with Mother on the places and the streets of her beloved city to pray at her tomb and on the homes that Mother opened on that city and share on the apostolate in order to deepen and understand better Mother’s message on the charism.”
We are confronted daily with a culture of death. Even 23 years after her death, her influence and voice continues to resound throughout the globe. By the time she died on September 5, 1997, modernity’s greatest triumphs were dashed by wars, genocides, the rise and fall of totalitarian regimes, modernism and finally the rise of the culture of death.

Her life will ever remain a response to these inhuman situations created due to prevailing injustice and culture of death and now this treacherous pandemic of Corona. Her mission was to inculcate the civilization of love in all spheres. She was the strong voice for the culture of life, dignity of human person and a fearless witness of the sanctity of life from the time of conception to natural death.

The Corpus Christi movement has a great potentiality to help clergy globally in their priestly journey, life and mission by living the reality of Mother’s charism, satiating the thirst of Jesus in and through their priestly ministry in their respective fields of mission. Those who are interested to know more about the movement may contact in the web and emails below: http://corpuschristimovement.com/corpxti@gmail.com and fsrozario@yahoo.com