Mother Teresa: Angel of Charity
Father Roger Charest, SMM
Angel . . .
In September of 1991, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the 20th Century “Angel of Charity,” wrote a letter to the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, petitioning him to declare St. Louis de Montfort a doctor of the Church.
“Dear Holy Father, ” she wrote. “I know how tenderly you love Mary, our Blessed Mother and entrust to her intercession the Church and the world. I have also heard it is your wish that St. Louis de Montfort be declared a Doctor of the Church. I hope this wish of your Holiness would be carried out soon. And that the Saint may soon be named a Doctor of the Church.”
. . . of Charity
The preceding excerpt alone, from Mother Teresa’s petition to the Holy Father in favor of our founder, St. Louis de Montfort, should be reason enough to explain my great desire to meet her some day – in person! But my desire antedates this event by more than a year.
In the summer of 1990, I had been invited to conduct a three-day retreat for the Contemplative branch of Mother Teresa’s Community, at their novitiate, in the Bronx (N.Y.), in preparation for their patronal feast; The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Cause of Our Joy and Queen of the World (Aug. 22). I was already aware that Mother Teresa was a fervent promoter of the de Montfort way of spiritual life. A promoter both for herself and her rapidly growing community. I therefore considered it a privilege to share with her contemplative community a form of spirituality so perfectly suited to their “contemplative, apostolic and missionary activity, ” described in their own Constitutions; a Marian Spirituality deeply rooted in our baptismal commitment to Christ through the hands of Mary, which Pope John Paul II described, in his Marian Year encyclical, “as an effective means for Christians to live faith-fully their baptismal commitments.”
Mother Teresa and Fr. Roger Charest, SMM.
“Through all the work we do for Jesus, with Jesus, to Jesus, we will ask Him to deepen our love for His Mother, to make it more personal and intimate, so as to: love her as He loved her, be a cause of joy to her as He was, keep close to her as He did, share with her everything, even the Cross, as He did, when she stood near the cross on Calvary.”
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Love Mary . . .
Paragraph 219 of their Constitutions, sums up quite well Mother Teresa’s Marian approach to Jesus for her Sisters. “The gift of our religious vocation and perseverance in it, as well as in God’s friendship, till the end of our life, are the supreme graces which Christ’s Mother will infallibly obtain for everyone who turns to her in trustful prayer.
. . . As Jesus Loves Her
“Through all the work we do for Jesus, with Jesus, to Jesus, we will ask Him to deepen our love for His Mother, to make it more personal and intimate, so as to: love her as He loved her, be a cause of joy to her as He was, keep close to her as He did, share with her everything, even the Cross, as He did, when she stood near the cross on Calvary.”
My above-mentioned long desire to meet Mother Teresa in person was about to be fulfilled when, on June 14th, I received a phone call from a friend who asked if I would be interested in seeing her at Our Lady of Victory Church, in Brooklyn, the next day. I was told that she was coming to visit her Sisters who worked in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant area. And that she planned to attend the 5 P.M. Mass that afternoon .
My response, of course, was a resounding: “Yes, I’d be delighted”! My motives, I must confess, may not have been completely devoid of selfishness. I felt that if I had the opportunity to greet her personally, I would present something to her. Presented in the name of the world-wide Montfort Communities (The Montfort Missionaries, the Daughters of Wisdom and the Brothers of St. Gabriel) a copy of the newly published “Jesus Living in Mary, ” the Handbook of the Spirituality of St. Louis Marie de Montfort.
To make a long story short, Our Blessed Mother had arranged everything for us – for me and the little group that accompanied me that day. It was just as St. Louis de Montfort said: “Mary arranges things in advance so as to divert evils from her servants and put them in the way of abundant blessings”. (T.D. Par. 203).
Holding Mary In Her Heart
No sooner had we parked, that the car that brought Mother Teresa to the Church pulled up near us. Her own Sisters hurried to greet her and we were the first group to meet her. What a wonderful experience to gather around her outside the Church- yard. How wonderful to receive the blessing of her presence among us. She went from person to person giving us each a Miraculous Medal.
The great moment for me came when I was able to present her with a copy of “Jesus Living in Mary”. As soon as she realized what I was offering her, she reached for it and held it close to her heart. See photo above. She knows what this form of Marian Spirituality has already done for her and her community “in the service of the poorest of the poor.”
