“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded… She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity…” – Pope Francis
LAKE STATION – Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun who dedicated her life to caring for the destitute in India, officially became St. Teresa of Calcutta on Sept. 4, 2016, almost two decades after her death on Sept. 5, 1997.
Bishop Robert J. McClory, religious sisters of the Missionaries of Charity and other members of the Diocese of Gary celebrated the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta on her feast day with a special Mass and dinner at St. Francis Xavier in Lake Station.
Sister Maria Jyoti, .m.c, superior, said it was a special day to honor St. Teresa for all the gifts she has given to them. She said she hopes people remember St. Teresa for the joy and the love she had in serving others. In addition to her love and joy, she said people continue to be attracted to the compassion she showed for all.
“They experience the love of God in what we do,” she said. “We, too, are very grateful for her life and what she did for us, and we rejoice and remember.”
The Missionaries of Charity have resided in the Diocese of Gary for the past 27 years. Sister Jyoti said it has been a blessing to minister within the diocese and be chosen to be people who “serve and radiate Christ’s love.”
Margo Diaz, of Portage, has been volunteering for the past three years at the kids camp the sisters host annually, and said she has been “just so amazed by their charity, their generosity and the way they carry themselves. They are truly, truly living the life of Christ.”
“We are all trying to be like Christ, and it's so hard sometimes, but they really are the epitome, the example, of what we all should be,” Diaz added.
During the homily, Bishop McClory shared that one of the things he finds most inspiring about St. Teresa of Calcutta was her ability to take very complex, theological principles and distill them into a few words that people can relate to and easily understand – “to take some simple words and give those words a rich and deep meaning.”
Bishop McClory said he tries to follow her example, striving for a certain level of simplicity in preaching, especially when presiding over an all-school Mass.
“How can I express something to young school students in a way that they can understand it?” he said. “And the fact of the matter is that for many of us, we probably need the grade school version anyway. We need to be able to go back to the basics and just come and understand it.”
He continued by stating that the gospel readings for the day touched on the need for Christians to love God and to love their neighbor. He suggested an easy way to remember those two principles is to think about the image of the cross.
The cross has two simple parts to it. It has a vertical portion, and it has a horizontal portion. The vertical line, going up and down, can be used to describe a relationship with God. Although God is everywhere, the bishop said, people can think of God as up in heaven, so they think of a vertical axis, reminding them that they are called to receive God's love.
Bishop McClory noted that in the day's readings, particularly in the first letter of St. John, it describes how people are loved by God and called to love God in return. Quoting the Bible, he recited, “Let us love one another because love is of God. In this way, the love of God was revealed to us. God sent his only son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us.”
He added, “We can think of that vertical axis as being ‘God, I need to receive your love. And I need to love you and return.’”
Bishop McClory also pointed to the Ten Commandments, describing that the first three commandments deal with the faithful’s love of God, their relationship with God, which is primary. Then, the second part of the Ten Commandments, commandments four through 10, provides context on how people are to love one another.
“The reality is that to love our neighbor is to love God,” he said. “To love our neighbor is to love Christ himself. That's what Mother Teresa gave witness to. That's what the Missionaries of Charity live out. That's what those who support their ministry, who are lay associates, those who are affiliated with what they do, are inspired to say: ‘I'm not going to live my life in two separate planes. I'm loving God and my neighbor,’ and those two are entirely interrelated.”
The bishop said the beauty of Mother Teresa was that she saw Christ in all those whom she served.
“That can be hard for us,” he said. “I have such admiration for the ministry of the Missionaries of Charity, I have such admiration for St. Mother Teresa, because these can be just kind of words on a page. We can hear these over and over again and say, ‘Well, I don't know. That sounds kind of hard. I don't know if I could do that. You know there’s a lot of people who I don't like, and I'm supposed to serve and love them. A lot of people who I might be uncomfortable being in their presence, and I'm really supposed to do that?’ and Mother Teresa says, ‘Yes, and more. The poorest of the poor. The most in need of God.’”
