By Teresa Reyes Tunay
ROME, ITALY, October 12, 2003—The first time I read about Mother Teresa, in the early 80s, I got curious. Why would a nun—already safe, saved and fulfilled in her vocation—still want to leave her Congregation in order to carry a heavier cross? She was outstanding as a missionary nun assigned as teacher in India when from the window of her relatively comfortable room she would see sick old people dying unwanted in the streets and be moved by a desire to ease their pain. While retaining her religious name “Teresa”—after the Carmelite saint Therese of the Child Jesus—she shed her old Loreto habit and donned the white sari symboli
zing her oneness with the poorest of the poor around her.In God’s own time Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity: together with her Sisters they would pick up the sore-infested old folks practically rotting away in Calcutta’s streets, bring them home, and care for them until death so they would know the love of Christ and die with dignity.
When I heard that Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had reached the Philippines, I wasted no time to serve as a volunteer at their Home for the Dying Destitute, that place in Tayuman where the Sisters would load their pick-up with the old, sick and homeless old people gathered from Manila’s streets. I knew that I would be enriched by the experience as volunteer, cleaning toilets, hanging laundry, feeding and bathing patients, trimming their hair or nails, giving them a backrub, talking to them, cheering them up, trying to give them the love their own families would not give. Thus, I was no longer a stranger to the Sisters when they announced that Mother Teresa was coming to visit the Philippines.
“I must meet this person,” I promised myself, although I must admit that half my eagerness was out of journalistic curiosity—in this day and age someone like Mother Teresa would be a rarity and make a good story. But most of all I had hoped I would be given a peek into the soul of this diminutive Albanian nun whose name I could not even pronounce the same way twice: Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu.
And it came to pass. As fate would have it, the interview that I had wanted turned into more of an intimate exchange between two Teresas. I never imagined, however, that Mother Teresa would leave such a deep and lasting impression on me more than any other human alive, nor cared that she would one day be elevated to the altar of the blessed in the Vatican, as she will be on Sunday, October 19.
Upon seeing Mother Teresa, I almost forgot about journalism. I heard and saw her speak to the crowd—she impressed me. But I didn’t want to interview or photograph her, write a story, whatnot. I just wanted to listen on and on. I sensed that she would be more than just a scoop for me, so I simply asked to be blessed by her (“Mano po!”). She obliged and then gave me much, much more: she held my hand, and as we walked she spoke to me as though nobody else mattered at the moment but me. I got hooked.
Her intensity amazed me. Since then I wanted to see and listen to her again and again, wherever and whenever possible, so I could dissect her mind—how could this busybody be so focused on and loving towards a stranger like me? Having been inspired and touched by her, I even wrote her Calcutta house to apply as a month-long volunteer there. My application was politely declined, with a handwritten note that I stay and continue to volunteer in Manila where I was needed more. The Calcutta house was already crowded with volunteers from all over the world, while there were not enough in Manila. I was disappointed for a while but as time passed, as I read and heard more about her work, I slowly understood why I was turned down—it had to be so.
There was no need to meet Mother Teresa another time, after all, in order for her to live on in me. That first impression was to last, forever offering me new insights and inspiration in my own journey to God. In Tayuman, not once did I take my eyes off her as she addressed the crowd. It was simply a marvel how that little nun, physically unattractive by any standard, could hold her audience spellbound by simply talking about Jesus.
Mother Teresa wasn’t pretty as some nuns I’d remember from childhood who appealed to me because they resembled the Virgin Mary in my imagination. Small and slightly hunched, Mother Teresa had a face so badly creased, a peasant’s hands, and a nose so big it could be a caricaturist’s delight, yet when I was with her there was nothing else I’d rather look at but her—there was nobody else more beautiful. She was so saturated with Jesus’ presence that when she’d speak, Jesus would come alive through her words—Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus, as though even she herself did not exist at all.
As she spoke to her audience, her blue eyes which were simply out of this world would be focused most of the time on some distant horizon, as though their blue was but a reflection of the sea and the sky. Those eyes were piercing, her gaze was penetrating in its purity, like a laser beam cutting through your flesh and bone to expose your very marrow. I did not want those eyes to gaze at me because they possessed a meekness that seemed to strip my soul bare—it seemed impossible to hide anything from them.
That fateful meeting where she held my hand and spoke to me like an intimate friend uncovered for me a kinship between us that was to go beyond a celebrity-journalist connection. Knowing Mother Teresa further by the witness of people whose lives she had touched—notably the British journalist and agnostic Malcolm Muggeridge who asked to be baptized into the Catholic religion after a momentous encounter with Mother Teresa—all the more convinced me that we shared something more than just our name. I was to realize soon enough that that my fascination with Mother Teresa was rooted in the fact that we had been wooed by the same Lover. There was a great difference, though—Mother Teresa’s heart was already totally His, while half of this Teresa’s heart was still inhabited by lesser loves.
Although we were both “world citizens” our world citizenship diverged where heaven began. As she would say, “By blood, I am Albanian; by citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” There she was when we met, already strolling with Jesus while I was still attempting to rise, on wobbly knees, from crawling. Thus I looked up to Mother Teresa and appointed her my “spiritual nanny.” Of course, she was not aware that she was one of those teaching me how to walk. By her witness and example conveyed to the whole world by media, I gradually absorbed lessons on walking with Jesus.
On detachment from worldly goods: Mother Teresa and her Sisters had only rickety pickups serving as ambulance. A wealthy man took note of this and gifted Mother Teresa with a limousine for her personal use. The humble nun raffled the limo off and with the proceeds bought ambulances. The raffle winner in turn raffled it off again and donated the proceeds to Mother Teresa’s poor. We ordinary mortals would have jumped with joy and thought how loved we are by God that He made us win a car.
On seeing Jesus in every person: Mother Teresa saw, respected and loved Jesus in each of them; thus it was easy for her to embrace the poorest of the poor, the filthiest of society’s unwanted. She felt privileged to dress their wounds and clean up their mess because she was doing it for Jesus. No doubt inspired by St. Therese, a spiritual daughter of St. John of the Cross who taught that if we want to love Jesus we must expose ourselves to the smelly, the ignorant, the ugly in our midst. By doing so, Mother Teresa was being Jesus who was surrounded by lepers and attending to the sick. How many of us—polished and perfumed people of the world—would bother to look for Jesus outside of our comfort zones?
On the value of discomfort: in all of Mother Teresa’s houses, the words “I thirst” are written close to the crucifix. Chapels have no pews or comfortable seats; instead, the floor is lined with native mats where the Sisters would sit or kneel on at prayer. That is how they stay awake with Jesus, to offer their discomfort as their share in His suffering, to quench His great thirst for the love of people who have all but forgotten Him.
On trusting in Divine Providence: one day, the Calcutta community’s coffers were empty, and so was the pantry. There wasn’t even enough bread for the day’s last meal, and they were sure the morrow would be a bigger headache. Undaunted, Mother Teresa calmly led the Sisters to pray that the next day might be better so as not to starve the patients. That very night, a truckload of bread arrived, an unsolicited donation from a bakery chain. Little miracles like this have become commonplace in Mother Teresa’s houses that you can’t help being reminded of the day Jesus fed over 5,000 people from five loaves and two fish. Her example shone in a world where Christians worshipped Christ on Sundays and worried to death for bread the rest of the week.
On simplicity and contentment: Mother Teresa’s Sisters wear no shoes, only cheap rubber thong sandals, but they are by far the happiest community of nuns I have seen in my whole life. They want for nothing—what the poor can’t have, they do not want to have. Sometimes I wish the rich and famous women in the Philippines would realize that they could help solve our country’s problems if they would only give up at least one pair of their Manolo Blahniks for Jesus’ sake!
On time management: with the demands of her work among the needy, you would think Mother Teresa would have no more time to waste on “doing nothing”. On the contrary, this “idle time” is Mother Teresa’s trysting time with God, and she would exhort her nuns to faithfully keep their appointments with Jesus day and night. Sitting still and emptying themselves at prayer time is fundamental to their mission. It is when they fill themselves with Jesus, that they may in turn pour out His love on thirsting humanity.
On joy being the fruit of the Spirit: in all the years I have served as a Mother Teresa volunteer, I have yet to see a Sister lose her cool. No matter how difficult a patient is—and unwanted, sick and old people can be unnerving, mind you—the Sisters would be not only calm and collected but cheerful as well. Not a trace of impatience or irritation in their countenance—an enviable fruit of unceasing surrender to Jesus that forms a vital part of Mother Teresa’s legacy to her daughters and to the world.
Over 18 years have passed since Mother Teresa held my hand and whispered to my soul. Did she see the leper or the bleeding woman in me? I’m sure she did, but she also saw Jesus, and that was what brought tears to my eyes, tears that only Mother Teresa saw.
On October 19, I am supposed to be there, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to witness Mother Teresa’s elevation to the altar of the Blessed. Although I had at one point vaguely wished I could be bodily present on that joyous occasion, a reality check prevented me from wanting to be there—it is a luxury a simple writer like me can ill afford.
But as circumstances would have it, a previously planned working trip to Rome was cancelled on the 11th hour, leaving me with a Schengen visa with nowhere to go. And whether it was fate, luck, coincidence or Mother Teresa responsible for my assignment, I do not really care to know. Until I’m there—I surmised—right before the altar when it happens, I can not believe I’m going. It didn’t really matter whether I go or not—if for some reason my trip didn’t push through, I promised to be with Mother Teresa’s poor in Tayuman on Oct. 19.
But I am here now, in Rome, awaiting that day, and I know that wherever Mother Teresa finds me on Sunday, her piercing blue eyes will smile at me.
END
