Excerpt from a homily by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta:
Even if they don't know it, I think that many people, even if they are non-believers, are attracted to Mother Teresa because she is a path to Jesus: the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
While it is well nigh impossible to sum up the secret of Mother's spirituality, the lessons she can teach us, I would like to draw your attention to three characteristics that, at least to me, sum up her amazing attractiveness: she was a witness to joy, to the inseparability of the love of God and neighbour, and to the light of faith amid feelings of darkness.
Was not Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta an unforgettable witness of true Gospel joy in our time? She lived in touch daily with wretchedness, human degradation, and death, yet she gave everyone God's smile.
In 1979, when receiving the Nobel Prize in Oslo, she spoke not only of the scourge of abortion but also of the love of God: "Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts," she told that august audience, "and share that joy with all we come in touch with. That radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and the smile we receive."
By witnessing to the love of neighbour, the most neglected among us, Blessed Teresa shared in God's love for the world, conforming herself to Him Who is love (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8, 16). In her, as in all the saints, one thing becomes clear: she exemplified the inseparability between love of God and love of neighbour.
Few people embodied this inseparability more than Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, with her challenging directness, simplicity, and comforting presence. She embodied the love of God for everyone, above all the most abandoned, the poorest of the poor.
"We care for Christ in His distressing disguise," she once said.
To a man who once saw her cleansing the wounds of a leper and said, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars," she replied, "Neither would I, but I would do it gladly for Christ."
That's the key to her spiritual life: those haunting words of Jesus which she took literally: "Whatsoever you do to the least of My brothers, you do to Me" (cf. Mt. 25:40). She was convinced - and this is her lesson to us - that in touching the bodies of the poor, diseased, and dying she was touching the body of Christ, Who is crying out for love in their broken bodies.
Small of stature, rocklike in faith, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God's love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. "God still loves the world, and He sends you and me to be His love and His compassion to the poor," she wrote.
But her love of God and her beloved poor was not accomplished without cost, without suffering, without great faith. Only after her death was another heroic side of this great woman revealed. Any idea that her service of the poor was accompanied by a constant assurance and comfort from God has been shattered. As it turned out, it was not any "easier" for Mother Teresa to work with the poor with such dedication that it would be for any of us. In fact, it was harder than anyone could have imagined.
Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life of profound faith. It was marked by an experience of a deep, painful, and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience "the darkness."
This "painful night" of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and may well have continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever more profound union with God. Through this darkness she shared in the Calvary thirst of Jesus, in His painful and burning longing for love: "I am thirsty."
Through this experience she shared in the interior desolation of the poor. Because she often suffered from God's silence, she shared in the lot of many whom she served, and she was able to understand her brothers and sisters who do not know God. This intense interior struggle makes what she accomplished and her example all the more remarkable.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is a gift of God to our world hungering after love given freely and without reserve. Entirely consumed by love for God and totally dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel, she is a teacher of holiness for all of us, revealing through her wrinkled visage the face of Christ that shone in her.
