By Rona R. Harding
Tomorrow we are celebrating Labor Day, a day when we remember all those who labor for us. This past week, we also have remembered Mother Teresa, on the 10th anniversary of her death, who labored for more than 66 years in the slums of Calcutta, showing great love and mercy to the poor. The revelation that this was not always easy work is shown in several dozen recently released letters that she wrote to her confessors and spiritual advisors in the 1950s and ’60s, expressing doubts and struggles with her faith. It has been shocking to some that she sometimes felt far from God as she labored showing Christ’s love to those around her. My 95-year-old father, for example, says she cannot be considered a saint if she ever doubted. But I have a different view.
In 1981, I worked for two months in Calcutta with Mother Teresa’s sisters and brothers of Charity in the Home of the Dying Destitutes. At that time, Mother Teresa was in Rome nursing Pope John Paul II, who had been shot as he mingled in the crowds at the Vatican, so I did not personally work with her, but I participated in her work. To walk into the Home of the Dying Destitutes was like walking into Auschwitz at the end of World War II. All one could see were living skeletons, hollow bodies and pain. For that reason, Mother Teresa had instructed her brothers and sisters and volunteers to turn their backs and look first to a wall that had a crucifix of Christ on it, with the words “I thirst” written beside it. These words reminded us that as we ministered to the dying, we would be ministering to Christ. Then all of us prayed this prayer she had written which was transcribed under the crucifix: Dear Lord, Great Healer, I kneel before you since every good and perfect gift must come from you. I pray, give skill to my hand, clear vision to my mind, kindness and sympathy to my heart. Give me singleness of purpose, strength to lift at least part of the burden of my suffering fellowmen, and a true realization of the privilege that is mine. Take from my heart all guile and worldliness that with simple faith of a child I may rely on you. Amen.
Then, and only then, we would go to work. The men would go to the male side of the home, while the women would work on the female side. We would bathe, change sheets, rub with ointment the parched itching skin of the starving, cook food and feed them. Usually the dying would revive a bit when they were brought in from the streets, from the comfort and care they were given, before they died. Some would get better and be transferred to one of Mother Teresa’s rehab hostels, where they would be taught a skill as they gained more strength. The sisters and brothers would send for an Imam, or Hindu priest, or priest – whatever the religion the dying was – so that each would have last rites in their own tradition. Comfort and love filled the place. It was quiet and dignified. But the work was hard and thankless. The brothers and sisters worked six days a week, ministering on the streets, running an orphanage, the various hospitals and the leper colonies. They had volunteers who would come in on Sundays so that they could go to church. We started the day with communion at 6:30 a.m. (for me at the Anglican Church across the street and for them in their chapel) and ended the day together at 4 p.m. with an hour of silent worship at Mother Teresa’s Mother House, in the chapel in front of the figure of St. Mary, mother of our Lord.
I personally found the work rewarding, but recognized that I would not have survived three days in Calcutta without a purpose, for the poverty was overwhelming, more than I had ever seen before or since. Lepers without faces, fingerless hands, children with leper spots, continue to haunt me to this day. Although the Missionaries of Charity are doing a great deal to stop the disease from spreading in the body, Calcutta remains a city with more than 100,000 people living on its streets, where disease, hunger, violence and cruelty are rampant. It is not unusual to see a parent starving a child to make her more pitiful in order to beg for money. Nor is it unusual to see a child whose parents have cut off his arms and legs, in order to make him into a beggar for them. Such is the depressing environment of Calcutta. I cannot begin to describe the magnitude of the problems there.
So no wonder Mother Teresa was depressed from time to time and felt dry and thirsty for God. She was constantly ministering not only to the poor, her more than 900 brothers and sisters and volunteers, but also administrating the numerous ministries that her witness founded all over the world. St. James in his Epistle says, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” Or to say it another way, our faith must translate into works. There will or have been times in all our lives when we have not felt our faith, not felt the love of God, nor the love of our family members. But at such times we have lived out our faith as duty, believing in the will of God. This I believe Mother Teresa did in those dark times of her life, which all the saints have experienced, and yet remained faithful. St. James goes on to say, “faith without works is dead,” so by her works we can say her faith was alive, for she choose to believe, to love and to work, although she did not always feel it.
And finally, because Calcutta is such an overwhelming place, I believe that Mother Teresa in her love for all those she touched emptied herself completely from time to time. Her humility would not allow her to take credit for the honors she was given, for she was doing it all of God, for Christ Jesus. Her darkness in her letters, which she often called “thirst” to me shows that she entered into the passion of Christ, who thirsted for a better world. Her questioning at times her faith, as a recent Time Magazine article (“Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith,” Aug. 23, 2007) suggested, echo Jesus’ cry from the cross, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me!” And yet, she continued to work and love, finding solace in her work. For remember, these letters are not daily scripts, but only represent occasional periods in her 66 years of work. They say to us that just as Jesus felt thirst and passion, and just as Mother Teresa did, so will we from time to time in our lives, if we have not done so already. The secret is to continue to love, to believe and serve and life will return.
The Rev. Rona Harding is rector of the Church of the Ascension, Lexington Park, Maryland, in the Diocese of Washington.