By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Almost 50 years ago, on October 19, 1972, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now Saint Teresa of Kolkata) visited the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville. Fortunately, I found recordings of the talks she gave while there. Yesterday in this blog, I described the origins/logistics of the visit and how Mother Teresa addressed a half dozen major themes and principles during her discussions with the monks and her supporters (see: Mother Teresa Utah Visit Part 1). Yesterday’s blog also included the saint’s words about her first (and foremost) focus—that caring for the poor must be centered in Jesus Christ. Today’s blog provides details on the other important themes she addressed.
After describing how she anchors her work in Christ, Mother Teresa addressed five other themes. She explained how people should look first to help the poor in their own neighborhoods before seeking to help the poor in far-flung places. She then discussed how what she called “the work” can and should begin in a small way, by doing even just the “one thing” that may lead to more meaningful things. She said volunteers should thank those who help them. She emphasized that very person of any means can share in the work. And finally, although she and others chose to be poor to understand the poor, those doing the work must do it with joy and a smile. Each principle is described further below.
Time and again in her Huntsville presentations, Mother Teresa gently reminded her listeners that “poor people are everywhere,” and it is not necessary to go and see her in Calcutta, or volunteer in faraway locations such as India, in order to help the poor. She placed great value in focusing on local needs. For example, during discussions about sending supplies to India from America, and regarding an American nun from another order who wanted to help in India, Mother Teresa repeatedly asked her coworkers to “concentrate on the close-by places.” It was her way of saying think globally but act locally.
Similarly, she recounted how certain men, members from the Christian Brothers order teaching in a wealthy school in Australia, wrote to her wanting to leave their rather posh (by comparison to Calcutta) surroundings and help her in India. She wrote back and urged the brothers to stay where they were, but to bring more local poor people into their wealthier community. She told them something true for poor and rich alike in their local community, “If you are not there, who will give God to them?”
In her Utah talks, Mother Teresa often repeated her belief that charitable efforts begin “in a very small way” by “doing the one thing.” She used herself as an illustration. “If I didn’t pick up that one person, I would not have picked up 37,000. In Calcutta alone, we have picked up 37,000 people from the streets. If I had missed that one, quite possibly I would not have picked up 37,000.” The same was true in her care for lepers. She started by helping three, and as of 1972, told how she had cared for about 47,000, all because she started with just three of them.
Starting small also led to big changes for Mother Teresa in another way, specifically a remarkable change in the attitude of local people towards her. She told the Huntsville monks how her Calcutta house for the dying (called “Kalighat”) was in a former temple to Kali, the Hindu goddess of time, creation, and destruction. Kali’s image is a fearful one, with blue skin and bearing swords and other weapons in her many arms. Many Hindus objected to Mother Teresa’s presence in the old abandoned temple. They would protest outside and shout, “Kill Mother Teresa!”
One day they made too much noise and disturbed her patients, and so she confronted them, “You want to kill me? Kill me! I’ll go to Heaven, but you must stop this nonsense!” They did stop the nonsense. Later, the Hindus who had shouted for her eviction or worse brought her a young Hindu priest with tuberculosis because no other hospitals and no one else would take him in. Mother Teresa personally accepted him and cared for him in the former Hindu temple until he died peacefully.
In Utah, Mother Teresa also explained the importance of expressing gratitude to those persons who had helped and supported the work, “even if they give you one cent.” Displaying the keen sense of humor evident in many parts of her taped discussions, she told the story of how one man would send her one rupee each month. “It cost him more to send it by post, I think. Then every month I had to send a card to him that said, ‘God Bless.’” She explained how one month, either while travelling or otherwise busy, she had not yet responded to her small but determined donor “and he wrote back to me and said, ‘You never sent me a God Bless you note!’”
By such examples, Mother Teresa taught that “Everybody can share in the work.” Again, she illustrated her point with stories. One involved the “University Boys” from Brahmin families who would come and do menial work at her home for the dying. This included touching and cleaning the “untouchables,” those persons on the lowest rung of the Indian caste system. All this work was risky—the upper class volunteers might be cast out of their wealthy homes for doing it.
Another story involved a poor man who recognized Mother Teresa at a railroad station and offered to pay for her train ticket. She said he wanted to participate in the work, but because of his extreme poverty, it was not practical. “It hurt me to accept the money [for the train fare] but I would have hurt him very badly if I had refused him, so I said yes…I knew that was all that this man had, but he said, ‘Thank you for allowing me to share in the work.’”
Finally, Mother Teresa explained to her 1972 Huntsville audience that those sisters who chose to work with her had to choose to be poor, but they also had to agree to work joyfully despite the poverty. “To be able to understand the poor and to know who the poor are and to understand their poverty, we try to live like the poor. And though our poverty is of choice, we choose to be without things and the poor people are forced to be poor.” This issue was one of basic credibility for her. “We can look straight into the face of our poor people and say I understand, I know, I know exactly how you feel. This has helped us come very close to them.”
However, she required that her workers “radiate joy” to the people, because she and her sisters “have no reason to be unhappy. We have every reason to be happy.” She underscored the point by repeating a joke that supposedly was circulating in Rome and the Vatican at the time: “When the Holy Father retires he is going to become the chaplain for Mother Teresa in the slums.” That joke remains timely even today—I can see Pope Francis eagerly applying for that retirement gig.
It’s really quite remarkable that Mother Teresa came to Utah. I think it is even more remarkable, however, that we now have a record of what she said when she was here. She sketched out a rather simple and clear way for us to care for others, one that remains as relevant today as it did a half century ago when she outlined it.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press in August of 2021.
