Dec 21, 2016
by Sr. Mary Finn, HVM
For a long-time faculty member, memories of Mother Teresa still inspire after decades.
When I was asked to commit to writing my reminiscence of Mother Teresa, I had to visit the unofficial journal written in my heart many years ago. Since those first encounters with her, I have carried these memories into my ministry in the city of Detroit and, in the spirit of a Home Visitor, into my daily Eucharistic liturgies where the memories are being relived, refashioned, and reinterpreted.
Inspiration to Serve
Among the persons on my dream list with whom I would have liked to visit during my lifetime, one would not have found Mother Teresa. I wanted to meet Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Rosa Parks.
Nonetheless, the "God of surprises" brought my first experience of Mother Teresa before me in the late 1960s. I was in Canada participating in a formation weekend with the Basilian Fathers and candidates. On Canadian TV, I saw a petite woman who appeared alongside a tall and joy-filled man. It was Mother Teresa and Jean Vanier, best known for his ministry among developmentally challenged persons.
As I watched and heard their words, my soul leapt with a deepening desire to follow Jesus by responding to persons in their joy and sorrow and glory.
The vocation of Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, and my Home Visitors of Mary is intensely Eucharistic. We each have the call from Jesus to "see Jesus" under the appearance of Bread and the same Jesus under the appearance of each human person. Every person is "consecrated," worthy of "adoration."
"Yes, I Am Sad"
The second time Mother Teresa entered my life was also by way of television. Several Sacred Heart faculty members had gathered in the faculty lounge to view a local daytime TV interview with Mother Teresa. She was asked by the interviewer, "Mother, are you ever sad?"
Her response was baffling, "Yes, I am sad." Years later, Bishop Bernard Harrington asked the same question of me. "Of course I am sad. I am Irish," was my reply.
That question touched upon my own Marian spirituality. I was moved to ask the same question of Mary, the mother of Jesus. My own devotion, prayer, and conversation with Mary began to deepen at that point as I often pondered what Mary's response to that question might be.
"I am Jewish. Of course I am sad. When I wrapped his tiny newborn body in swaddling birth clothes . . . and when I wrapped his same grown up dead body in burial clothe—I wept and my soul was sad.
"When Joseph and I lost' our child in the Temple, in the city of Jerusalem, we were afraid and sad."
The Answer Becomes Clear
My third time of acquaintance with Mother Teresa came through Fr. Edward Farrell, who was on the faculty of Sacred Heart for seventeen years, 1961-1978. Through chance or perhaps through God's mysterious ways, Father Farrell was traveling in 1972 from Chicago to Detroit by plane and happened to have a seat assignment next to Mother Teresa.
Thus began, although unofficially, Mother Teresa's connection with Detroit.
When Cardinal John Dearden, archbishop of Detroit, invited me to consider working with Fr. Bohdan Kosicki as vicaress for religious, I was "surprised by the Spirit," to use one of Father Farrell's book titles. This invitation was new and unfamiliar ground for me but provided me with "amazing graces" and untold rich experiences.
One of those experiences was the opportunity to participate in a discernment process. Mother Teresa entered my life once more.
Cardinal Dearden had invited me and several other archdiocesan directors to gather for lunch with Mother Teresa in his Palmer Park home. This was to be the beginning of a discernment process about the canonical establishment of the Missionaries of Charity within the Archdiocese of Detroit.
The following week, Cardinal Dearden and I continued the conversation in his office. We quietly wondered what God's will was for the sisters and the archdiocese. Psalm 27 became our prayer at that
moment.
The Lord is my light and my salvation . . .
Hear, O Lord, the sound of my call . . .
Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear . . .
Show me O Lord, your way . . .
Following that prayer, we were able to verbalize a description of what we could expect of Mother Teresa in Detroit. She was stubborn; my Irish ancestors would have called her "bull headed." In the context of God's work, we could say that she had a single, clear vision, focused and unafraid, "though an army encamp against her, she will not fear."
The woman who earlier sat with us at the lunch table was a tyrant, a blessed tyrant for mercy and compassion, who sees Jesus in everyone. In the words of the psalmist, "She waits for the Lord with courage;" she was a stout-hearted tyrant.
The cardinal knew his answer: "Yes, we will invite Mother Teresa to the archdiocese." The canonical process began. On July 23, 1977, the Missionaries of Charity were born in Detroit.
Mother and Rosa Park—In One Day!
Their first home was the former convent of the IHM sisters next to St. Agnes Parish in Detroit's Virginia Park neighborhood. On the day the Missionaries moved in, hundreds of visitors gathered around the parish and in the church for a liturgy to welcome the sisters. Many hoped to get a glimpse of this woman about whom they had read and heard, Mother Teresa.
She had already left the convent for the church when a group of about fifty people pounded on the front door of the rectory, demanding to see Mother Teresa: "Let us in. Let us see Mother Teresa."
I think they doubted my words when I told them that she was already in the church. My determination was as strong as theirs; they believed she was in the rectory and I insisted she wasn't. Finally they listened when I told the mob to go to the church and they disassembled.
The surprise for me that day was that when I locked the door and walked through the rectory to the church, I saw sitting quietly in the living room of the rectory was another great woman, Rosa Parks, awaiting a parishioner to walk her over to the church.
I never met Dr. King. I never met Dorothy Day. At St. Agnes I met Rosa Parks! That day, I felt immensely blessed to have walked with two great women who had at heart my own deep, caring, and loving desires for the people of Detroit.
A year before, in May 1978, Father Farrell was appointed pastor of St. Agnes Parish. There he continued his pastoral care and spiritual direction of the Missionaries of Charity. Several seminarians performed their weekly apostolic experience with the Missionaries. They accompanied the sisters in home visits to sick and abandoned people in the neighborhood.
Two Seminary Visits
That was not the end of my encounters with Mother Teresa. She visited Sacred Heart Seminarytwice. In the summer of 1979, when the parishioners of St. Agnes were enjoying their annual parish picnic on our seminary grounds, they were joined by Father Farrell, Mother Teresa, and several friends of the Missionaries of Charity. Later on in the week, Mother appeared again on the seminary grounds to visit Father in his office. She was a joyful, happy, and "thirsty" tyrant for Jesus. She knew Jesus was "her kind of Tyrant," in love with her and all of the human family.
This account ends where it beganin the heart of Jesus:
"Stay with us [Jesus], and then we shall begin to shine like you shine; . . . the light O Jesus, will be all from you, none of it will be ours."
Sr. Mary Finn, HVM
Sr. Mary Finn, HVM, is assistant professor of theology and director of supervised ministry/integrating studies at Sacred Heart. This year marked her forty-fifth year of service to the seminary.