THIRTEEN years after her death, the impact of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s work and prayer is still felt around the world.
Mother Teresa would have turned 100 on August 26. The order she started 60 years ago – the Missionaries of Charity – continues its outreach to the “poorest of the poor”.
Her spiritual life also continues to gain attention as her sainthood cause progresses.
Many say Mother Teresa’s legacy is the combination of her extreme devotion to the poor and her spirituality since both were so deeply intertwined.
For young people, the nun is a model for how to live out one’s faith.
“What strikes them is that she practised what she preached,” an associate professor of theology at the Jesuit-run Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, Eileen Burke-Sullivan said.
She said students connected with Mother Teresa because they grew up seeing her image on television or in the newspaper and they knew she “lived and died working for poor”.
Ms Burke-Sullivan told Catholic News Service that students appreciated how Mother Teresa made that connection between the practice of faith and justice.
A theology professor at St Mary’s College of California in Moraga, David Gentry-Akin, said for all the accolades about Mother Teresa, she also received a fair amount of criticism. Although many thought her work was noble, they also wanted her to do more to “change the system” and some in the Church thought she was too traditional.
But as he sees it, the nun’s enduring legacy is her spirituality. “The work she did is phenomenal,” he said, adding that it was more effective because it was “motivated out of deep faith and holiness”.
Prof Gentry-Akin said a telling feature of Mother Teresa’s spirituality was revealed in a prayer she was said to have prayed each day asking God’s light to shine through her so that those she came in contact with would “see no longer me but only Jesus”.
The prayer’s imagery serves as the title for a book of her writings published in 2007: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. It describes, in her own words, the crises of faith she experienced and how she often felt God had abandoned her.
After its publication, some said the revelations made Mother Teresa seem less genuine, but Prof Gentry-Akin said it only made her more inspirational.
“The fact that she could go through that and remain faithful makes her sanctity all the greater,” he said.
Margaret Thompson, a history professor at Syracuse University, said: “We are only now beginning to learn how complex she really was, and as historians we’re not ready to issue final word on her.”
Prof Thompson finds irony in those who dismissed Mother Teresa for being too traditional, saying she was initially viewed as controversial when she left her religious order to start her own order and walked through impoverished neighbourhoods in India wearing a sari.
She said Mother Teresa’s work was not about making good impressions but meeting the needs of people wherever they were.
And those needs are still carried out by 5029 sisters of her order in 766 convents in 137 countries. The order’s work also has expanded to priests and brothers of the Missionaries of Charity as well as lay Missionaries of Charity who run orphanages, AIDS hospices and centres for refugees and the disabled.
There are 377 active brothers serving in 21 countries, 44 contemplative brothers in five countries and 38 Missionary of Charity fathers in five countries.
At the time of Mother Teresa’s death, there were 3842 sisters, 363 active brothers, 14 contemplative brothers and 13 priests in the order.
Five years after her death, the Vatican began the process of beatification for the woman often described as a “living saint”.
In 2002, the Vatican recognised one miracle attributed to her intercession. Her canonisation is awaiting proof of a second miracle.
A sister at Queen of Peace, the North American motherhouse for the Missionaries of Charity in the New York City borough of the Bronx, told CNS there was no shortage of miracles attributed to Mother Teresa.
The sister, who did not want to be identified, said she spent a year in Calcutta working on the nun’s sainthood cause and spent three days simply entering miracles into the computer that people attributed to Mother Teresa’s intercession.
The sister said she was convinced the order continued its work through her prayers.
“We constantly feel her spirit,” she said.
Pope Benedict XVI said Blessed Teresa was “an exemplary model of Christian virtue” who showed the world that an authentic love for others opened the door to knowing and being with God.
Marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, the Pope sent a message to the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity Sr Mary Prema.
The message was read on August 26 in Calcutta, India, at the end of a special Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth.
In Calcutta, most of the Missionaries of Charity nuns gave up their regular seats in the motherhouse chapel to accommodate hundreds of pilgrims and volunteers who arrived for the early-morning Mass.
The Pope said Mother Teresa was a living example of St John’s words: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection.”
He asked the order’s sisters, brothers, priests and lay members to let God’s love continue to inspire them to give themselves “generously to Jesus, whom you see and serve the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the abandoned” and to draw constantly from Mother Teresa’s example and spirituality.
Contributing to this story was Chaz Muth, as well as Carol Glatz in Rome, and Anto Akkara in Calcutta.
