Mother Teresa

It is Jesus to Whom
We Do Everything

On October 19th, Mother Teresa will be pronounced Blessed by John Paul II. The secret of the little Albanian religious: the repeated call of a distinct, strong, and precise Voice and the vow to serve Jesus in everything

By Andrea Tornielli

Her history is made up of wonder, joy, humility, and suffering. It is a surprising and moving history, as those who met her and saw how lovingly she picked up human wretches dying in brutish conditions on the streets of Calcutta, restoring their dignity, know well. Mother Teresa, the tiny Albanian religious with the wrinkled face, who died in 1997 at the age of 87, is about to be proclaimed Blessed–next October–by the Pope who met her on various occasions and visited her leper asylums. Now, for the first time, documents are emerging from the acts of her beatification cause that reveal the secrets of the exceptional experience of this witness for Christ in our time.
In various personal letters–Fr Brian Kolodiejchuk, Postulator of the Cause, informs us–Mother Teresa reveals that Jesus was the first and only one to enthrall her heart: “Ever since my childhood, the heart of Jesus was my first love.” Along with this early intimacy with Jesus, the future religious received a special grace at the moment of her First Communion: “Since the age of 5, when I received Jesus for the first time, the love of souls penetrated me. It has grown with the years.” At the age of 36, Mother Teresa made a private vow “to give God whatever He asked for.” For 17 years, this vow remained a personal secret, confided only to her spiritual director, who approved it.

“I want Indian Sisters”
In a letter to Archbishop Ferdinand Périer of Calcutta, who did not understand why she was rushing to open new foundations, Mother Teresa revealed the hidden reason for her actions. She revealed that Someone had taken her secret vow seriously. “Before starting,” she wrote on January 13, 1947, “I want to tell you that at one word from you, Your Grace, I am ready not to entertain any more even one of these unwonted thoughts that have constantly come to me.” “In the course of this year,” she added, “very often I have desired intensely to be all for Jesus, and to act so that other souls–especially Indian ones–may come to love Him ardently, and to identify in every way with young Indian women so that I may love Him as He has never been loved before. I thought that this was one of my many crazy desires. I read the biography of St Maria [Frances Xavier] Cabrini: she did so much for Americans because she became one of them. Why can’t I do for India what she did for America? She did not wait for souls to come to her. She went out towards them…” In her letter to the Archbishop, Mother Teresa reveals that she distinctly heard the voice of Jesus saying to her, “Won’t you help me?” and again, “Will you refuse?” “One day,” Mother Teresa relates, “after Holy Communion, I heard the same Voice very distinctly: ‘I want Indian Sisters, victims of My love, be they Marys or Marthas, so closely united with Me as to radiate My love onto souls. I want free Sisters, clad in my poverty of the Cross; I want obedient Sisters, clad in my obedience on the Cross; I want Sisters overflowing with love, clad in the charity of the Cross. Will you refuse to do this for me?’”

“Bring the poor to me”
“And another day I heard, ‘… You are afraid of losing your vocation, of becoming worldly, or not managing to persevere. But no: your vocation is to love, to suffer, and to save souls, and by taking this step you will realize My heart’s desire for you. This is your vocation. You will wear simple Indian dress, or rather as My mother dressed, simply and poorly. What you are now wearing is holy because it is my symbol. Your sari will also become holy because it too will be my symbol.’ I tried to persuade our Lord that I would try to become a very fervent holy Sister of Loreto, a true victim here, in this vocation. But the answer came once again very clearly, ‘I want Indian Missionary Sisters of Charity, to be my fire of love among the poorest, the ill, the dying, the street children. They are the poor that you are to bring to Me; and Sisters who offered their lives as victims of my love would bring these souls to Me.’”

“I want to use you for my glory”
“I know that you are the most inept, weak, and sinful person, but precisely because you are this way, I want to use you for my glory! Will you refuse?” “These words,” Mother Teresa went on to say, “or rather that voice, frightened me. The idea of eating, sleeping, and living like the Indians filled me with trepidation. I prayed for a long time. I prayed so hard, I asked our mother Mary to ask Jesus to take all this away from me. The more I prayed, the clearer the voice in my heart became, and so I asked Him to do with me whatever He willed. He asked and asked again, repeatedly…”
This inspiration, or rather, this strong and precise “distinct voice,” is at the origin of Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta, the “inept and weak” Sister that since then nothing and no one has been able to stop.