How My Mother’s Prophetic Words About Mother Teresa Changed My Life

I am certainly thrilled, and definitely not surprised that Blessed Mother Teresa will be canonized on September 4, 2016. My mother knew – even way back then – that this day would come and I will always be grateful to my parents for giving us that beautiful experience so many years ago…

I was ten years old when I had the privilege of seeing Mother Teresa in person. It was 1973, and she had been invited to speak at one of the largest Southern California Catholic churches near our home. My parents packed all of us reluctant, impatient kids into the station wagon and drove down to San Clemente to attend this standing-room only event. Bo-ring! was all I could assume this day would be.

But upon entering the room where she was speaking, I immediately sensed the environment was charged with excitement, and the crowd was so focused on the tiny woman in the white and blue habit, you could hear a pin drop. For an event of that magnitude, I am embarrassed to admit I don’t remember a thing she said that day, not one word. It was my mother’s words I will never forget that day as she tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Always remember this day. You’re in the presence of a living saint.”

Ever since then, Mother Teresa has been a pillar in my life, helping me overcome my selfish ways through finding compassion for people who are suffering. She has been a wonderful example for me when prayer becomes difficult or discouragement in my work threatens to knock me down. I love to pull out her books and read her inspirational words, even just a paragraph or two, to remind me why we all are fighting the good fight.

She’s also been present to me in various ways. Many years ago, I resigned from a position with a company to take a new position elsewhere and my soon-to-be-former-boss gave me Mother Teresa’s book, No Greater Love, as a parting gift, which he had personally inscribed. He had no idea of my high regard for her and it was an especially thoughtful gift for a self-proclaimed atheist to give a Catholic.

Years later, I would marry a man who had previously spent time in the seminary in Rome discerning a vocation to the priesthood, and while he was there, he had the priviledge of being Mother Teresa’s chaperone and driver for an entire day. His account of her gentle humility and sense of humor coupled with a no-nonsense firmness when it came to her work are stories I never grow tired of hearing. A picture of him helping her as she walked down the streets of Rome that day hangs in my office as a reminder of her relentless pursuit of souls for Christ. But what has always touched me most deeply about this woman was her undying love for those who were abandoned and outcast.

It was her burning desire to bring compassion, dignity, and the love of Christ to the poor, sick, and dying in the streets of Calcutta. No one was too lost for her to love, no one was too low for her to serve. She understood better than most one of the last words Christ spoke as he hung dying on the cross… “I thirst”, was not a request for something to quench his physical thirst, it was a call to all of us to quench his desire by bringing souls to him.

It is precisely Mother Teresa’s example that has inspired my work for the divorced community in the Church, those who quite often feel abandoned and outcast because of their circumstances. The way she lived and worked constantly motivates me to do more and more and especially when I feel discouraged, I can look to her and find reasons to persevere, reasons to hope, and reasons to do whatever I do in life out of love for Christ.

I am certainly thrilled, and definitely not surprised that Mother Teresa will be canonized on September 4, 2016. My mother knew – even way back then – that this day would come, and I will always be grateful to my parents for giving us that beautiful experience. And here is the quote from this saint I love the most and find the most motivating:

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. – Mother Teresa