This Monday, September 5, we mark the 25th anniversary of the entrance into eternity at the conclusion of a life very well lived in service to her bridegroom. I am referring to none other than Mother Teresa of Kolkata and her bridegroom, Lord Jesus Christ.
This is a moment to reflect on the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation she founded in 1950. The Missionaries of Charity sisters now number 5,100 and serve in 139 countries. They have increased by one-third in the past 25 years. Why? Perhaps because of the strenuous demands of the calling to serve the poor.
The sisters wake at 4:40 am each morning and go to bed late in the evening. They receive no salaries or health benefits, forego material comforts such as air conditioning and television, and see their families only once a decade.
Mother Teresa and her sisters see Jesus as their bridegroom, as the gospel today mentions. Saint Teresa’s example of self-sacrifice and love for the Lord, hidden among the poorest of the poor, inspires her sisters to live out their vow to provide wholehearted and free service to the abandoned, the dying, lepers, the forgotten elderly, prisoners, and pregnant and abused women. The sisters charge nothing for their services and take no government money.
The Wall Street Journal today opined that the Missionaries of Charity are able to do so much with so little because they do everything with love.
For one example among many, in Haiti, where they've been since 1979, they encountered two major earthquakes and unprecedented lawlessness that left the country in near ruins. They dodged gunfire at their medical clinic, survived a highway kidnapping by gang members, and overcame blockades of their food, water, and medicine by the government. The people of Port-au-Prince referred to the Missionaries of Charity as "the sisters who stay.” (Jim Towey, Wall Street Journal, 9/2/2022).
In my own family, three biological sisters are Missionaries of Charity sisters. Two years ago, while I was visiting one of them in Philadelphia, she showed me the bullet marks on the walls of the convent where they live, in a poor, struggling neighborhood. The impressive and joyful life of these holy women and their spiritual grit came home to me during this visit.
The Missionaries of Charity sisters all around the world are “the sisters who stay." They testify to the truth of Mother Teresa’s famous saying, “Love is a fruit, always in season.”
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.jpg "Father Pinto Paul, C.S.C.")