"Holiness Walking"

It was June 21, 1985, and I was in Washington, D.C., with my fianc at the National Right to Life Committee's (NRLC) annual 3-day convention.

On Saturday evening, we were part of a crowd of around two thousand people who had gathered in a ballroom in the Hyatt Regency hotel to hear Mother Teresa of Calcutta speak. I can't quite recall if her speech was scheduled ahead of time or if she was a last-minute addition to the program. I do know she was in town to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan, which she did on Thursday, June 20.

Christ in Every Face

What I remember most about that night wasn't so much what our now new saint said, even though it was a powerful pro-life affirmation of the dignity of every human person, but the effect her mere presence had on those in attendance, myself included.

When she first appeared on stagealong with the late Dr. Jack Wilkie, who was then president of the NRLC Committee, his wife Barbara, the late Jack Kemp, and other former and current politician—you could literally hear a pin drop in the large ballroom. Then, looking around me, I observed many in the audience crying and shaking (including my future wife, Christine). It was as if the Holy Spirit had blown through the room unannounced.

And, in a sense, he had. People were overcome with emotion by the sheer holiness of the tiny, wrinkled 74-year-old woman who stood before themperched on top of a box so she could reach the microphonein her simple blue and white sari, the one you've seen her wear in pictures a million times before.

To this day, the thoughts and feelings I had on seeing her that night are vividly etched in my memory. Recently, I expressed some of these in a short poem. Strikingly, the effect she had seemed to have no boundaries as to whether you were religious or non-religious; it didn't seem to matter that night, or any other time for that matter. In fact, I saw what I assumed were veteran secular reporters getting choked up simply at the sight of her.

The late William F. Buckley Jr. many years ago edited a book, Did You Ever See A Dream Walking? That's a memorable title. Well, you could title a book about that evening with St. Mother Teresa similarly, Did You Ever See Holiness Walking?

I remember asking myself: How can a plain-looking person be so attractive? It was only years later that I could actually say I knew the answer.

I believe that this elderly Albanian missionary nun was so beautiful because, as she famously always said, she saw Jesus Christ in the face of every human person that she met and ministered to. And so, the more she saw the image of the Lord in each human being she encountered, the more we saw reflected in her eyes that same poor soul she saw and loved; that is, the beautiful face of our Savior himself (cf. Matthew 25:31-46).

What About the Critics?

Hard as it may be to believe, especially for Catholics and others with a real devotion to her, not everyone was a fan of St. Teresa. Her critics would accuse her of ignoring the "root causes" of poverty. They would ask her why she didn't focus her energy on changing the "social structures" that supposedly made and kept people poor.

As well, why did she concentrate on a simplistic (in their eyes) person-to-person approach to alleviating poverty? Where were the Big Programs? And why so much emphasis on suffering?

That was all too . . . Catholic.

Some even charged her with a certain dependency on the poor: she needed them (for her fame) and they needed her (for their soup). Many, too, were opposed to her pro-life stance on abortion and contraception, seeing her position as contrary to what the poor really needed to escape poverty.

These critics interpreted her unwavering faithfulness to Church teaching as unfaithfulness to the cause of the needy. And on it went.

Of course, St. Teresa would say that she wasn't focused on poverty so much as focused on the poor. She wasn't in love with poverty, as one well known critic of her had it, but with the poor. Many others had the vocation to do the Big Stuff with the Big Dollars and the Big Publicity. Her callingher mission, as she saw itwas to faithfully serve the poor of Calcutta, India, and other places with unconditional Christian love.

So for Mother Teresa it wasn't just about material goods, however important and necessary they are. And she and the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns that she founded, didn't neglect them. Yet her work wasn't simply to eradicate poverty, wonderful though that would be. Her order was (and is) also about the "spiritual poverty," as she put it, that she encountered in the secular and successful West. Her speech in Washington, D.C., that June evening didn't neglect to mention this kind of poverty, so much more difficult to eliminate because it is rooted in the heart.

If Christians wouldn't address spiritual poverty, who would?

Moral and Social Virtues

St. Mother Teresa had many virtues, natural and supernatural. The evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedienceyes; the theological virtues of faith, hope, and loveof course. But she also had acquired the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courageespecially courage.

How many times would we read that Mother Teresa had spoken truth to power, whether at the National Prayer Breakfast with powerful politicians present or some other gathering of the rich and mighty? What was usually mere clich or rhetoric with many people was reality with her. She was fearless in denouncing injustice of any kind always and everywhere, and proclaiming essentially (what would be called) the "gospel of life" against the "culture of death"even before St. Pope John Paul II used that language in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).

Her many virtues should not be thought of as only a matter of concern for her own personal moral and spiritual perfection. On the contrary, this holy woman demonstrated how personal virtue leads to social virtue and social virtue, in turn, helps reinforce (and even form) personal virtue.

Authentic Freedom, True Joy

As I think back over my more than twenty-six years of teaching at Sacred Heart, I am struck by how often I and others have invoked her name in countless examples to illustrate something in moral theology. One example I am fond of goes something like this.

Could we ever imagine St. Mother Teresa choosing to kick a sickly Hindu man rather than carry him across the road, like the Good Samaritan, to one of her homes or hospices? Students get a "kick" out of this example; indeed, they usually smile or chuckle when they hear it. They simply can't picture someone of Mother Teresa's saintly moral character willfully harming another human being, much less a sick and dying one.

It's not that she was no longer free to do so, but that she now had acquired what Christians consider true freedom: the freedom to choose and to do the good out of love for God and neighbor. Her will was harmonious with God's will. That's both authentic freedom and true joy. This is why saints are the most dependable (and happy!) people on earth. It's literally in their character (not their DNA!) to be constant.

No Pretense

Another virtue was of course her piety. A common image of her is with hands clasped together in deep prayer. A rosary was a constant companion. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's words from 2005 illuminate the relationship between piety, prayer, and anti-poverty work, particularly in Mother Teresa's own life:

People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. Piety does not undermine the struggle against the poverty of our neighbors, however extreme.

In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neighbor but is in fact the inexhaustible source of that service. In her letter for Lent 1996, Blessed Teresa wrote to her lay co-workers: "We need this deep connection with God in our daily life. How can we obtain it? By prayer." Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), no. 36

St. Mother Teresa's words were always simple but never simplistic. They weren't trite pious phrases. She didn't "do" throw-away lines. Rather, she did what all saints do in speech and action: she stripped away the pretense to focus on the essentialJesu—especially his face as found in the least of his brothers and sisters.

Saint of Social Teaching

St. Mother Teresa was a living embodiment of Catholic social teaching (CST). If CST is what comes to be out of the encounter of the gospel message with the needs of a particular time, she was its perfect

practitioner.

By adopting the culture of the Indian people she served, Mother Teresa displayed yet two other virtues: humility and respect. How many of us could be someone like her, who, in St. Paul's words, was "all things to all people" without compromising moral principles and religious beliefs?

"To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it" (1 Cor 9:22-23).

In her concern for the family and in her care for the weakest among us, including the unborn, St. Teresa showed us what Catholic social teaching should look like; it was (and is) true "social justice."

In her words and deeds, she reminded us that Christian charity should be about love, not simply "charity," understood only as a handout (although, that's surely often needed). Christian social action shouldn't be primarily philanthropy, politics, or bureaucratic programs. It should be about one goal: bringing the love of Christ to the poor in body and soul.

When Benedict XVI wrote the following words in Deus Caritas Est, I couldn't help but think that he, again, had Mother Teresa in mind as his inspiration:

Lovecaritaswill always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. . . .

We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.

The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. . . .

In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live by bread alone' (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human." (No. 28)

Memento Mori

I remember well the day I heard the news of Mother Teresa's death on September 5, 1997. My 64-year-old father-in-law would pass away unexpectedly twelve days later. Within the span of eighteen days, these two moral and spiritual giants in my life had died.

Almost twenty years later, whenever I reflect back on those mournful days, I recall the ancient words (both pagan and Christian), memento mori: "Remember that you have to die."

St. Teresa taught us how to die a holy death because she showed us how to live a holy life: in Christ Jesus. That's what all saints do.