Blessed Teresa, icon of mercy toward the sick

Blessed Teresa of Kolkata brought smiles to the faces of countless sick and dying people.

Feb 19, 2016

By David Gibson
Blessed Teresa of Kolkata brought smiles to the faces of countless sick and dying people. A story she told upon receiving the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize illustrates how much a smile on the face of someone weakened by illness meant to her.

One evening she and several sisters from the community she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, went out and "picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition."

Blessed Teresa asked the sisters with her to "take care of the other three," saying that she would "take care of this one that looked worse." So she "did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only, 'thank you,' and she died."

Then Blessed Teresa asked herself what she might have said had she been in that woman's situation. "I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself. I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain or something," she supposed.

But that woman "gave me much more -- she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face," she commented.

Something similar happened with "a man whom we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms," she told her Nobel audience. "We brought him to the home," she recalled, and he said:

"I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for."

She added: "It was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody."

Blessed Teresa, known universally in the 20th century as Mother Teresa, came to be recognized as the face of mercy toward the sick, the dying, the hungry, the unborn, the poor. The corporal works of mercy were what she and her religious order did.

Soon, though, she will be called St. Teresa of Kolkata. Pope Francis cleared the way to her canonization with his approval Dec. 17 of a miracle attributed to her intercession.

Her canonization, expected early next September, means the entire church -- currently celebrating a Year of Mercy -- now will turn attention to her once again as an icon of mercy toward all who suffer.

Is it surprising that the Nobel committee considered Mother Teresa a peacemaker? In fact, it was because of her mercy and care that the committee selected her for its esteemed prize.

"The hallmark of her work has been respect for the individual and the individual's worth and dignity," John Sanness, the committee's chairman from 1979 to 1981, remarked in a speech during her award ceremony.

Sanness added, "The loneliest and the most wretched, the dying destitute, the abandoned lepers, have been received by her and her sisters with warm compassion devoid of condescension, based on this reverence for Christ in man."

Many who readily acknowledge Mother Teresa as an inviting sign of mercy undoubtedly feel, nonetheless, that the situations she confronted among India's poorest people differ from the situations they confront. But she encouraged everyone to practice the works of mercy in their own circumstances, beginning at home.

After all, people who are profoundly ill feel vulnerable no matter where they are. Even those who are encouraged by the long-term prospect of recovery can feel alone in their illness or pain, and saddened or even depressed by it.

Mother Teresa grasped this. Her words make clear that she considered it immensely valuable simply to spend time with a sick person, to make oneself available to that person in caring ways.

"It is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others," she said in her Nobel lecture. She found Christ "in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive."

She suggested to her audience that there may be someone in their families "who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried." She asked, "Are we there?"

Sometimes, she observed, people find it difficult "to smile at each other," but a smile, she believed, "is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other, naturally we want to do something."

The ways of approaching sick and suffering people recommended by Mother Teresa are not reserved to medical personnel. But she did not want all the ordinary ways of caring for the sick, being present to them and expressing love for them to be slighted in importance.

For her, quite naturally, the works of mercy were rooted in faith. Her Nobel lecture stressed that "Jesus makes himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one, the sick one, the one in prison, the lonely one, the unwanted one, and he says: You did it to me."