Priest describes moving ceremony

One day in 1983, I was celebrating Sunday Mass in the convent in Rome of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. It was something I often did while I was assigned to the Vatican by Catholic News Service.

The nuns, who run a homeless shelter attached to the convent, live a simple and austere life. In their chapel, in fact, there are no seats; on entering, the sisters remove their sandals and sit on the floor.

I had finished reading the Gospel and was about to begin my homily when I looked down and saw Mother Teresa sitting at my feet. It was a bit disconcerting. I remember thinking, "What do I have to say to her?"

But she was very gracious; she came into the sacristy after Mass, thanked me for coming and talked to me about her visit to New York City the week before, where she had gone to open a homeless shelter in the Bronx.

I recalled that experience on Oct. 19 as I stood with 300,000 others in St. Peter's Square for Mother Teresa's beatification. I had been at canonizations and beatification ceremonies before, but this one had a different feel to it. Usually, the person being honored had lived generations or even centuries before. In this case, hundreds in the crowd -- maybe thousands -- had met Mother Teresa, known her and worked with her.

The fact that she had died only six years before gave this particular celebration an immediacy that was distinctive and dramatic.

Among those who felt the deepest joy was surely Pope John Paul II. Parkinson's disease and medications now keep his facial features rigid, blocking the display of much emotion, but the Pope's pleasure came through in the homily he wrote, even though someone else delivered it.

I thought of the time in 1986 when the Pope visited Mother Teresa's home for the dying in Calcutta and his special affinity for the tiny nun had clearly been on display. That day, as the popemobile neared the hospice, Mother Teresa had thrown protocol to the winds and hopped on. Doubtless the only woman ever to enter the pontiff's vehicle, she rode the last few yards, hugging the Pope like a long-lost friend, and he kissed her head.

Minutes later, he had come close to proclaiming her a saint 11 years before she died by saying: "The saints and true men and women of religion have always been moved by a powerful and active compassion for the poor and the suffering."

In the homily for the beatification, the Pope showed once again his admiration for the one he called "this little woman caught up in loving God." He referred to her as "an icon of the Good Samaritan" and lauded her courage, saying that she had used every opportunity to proclaim the values of the Gospel. As an example, he mentioned the time in 1979 when, upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, Mother Teresa had said to the audience: "If you hear that any woman doesn't wish to keep her child and wants an abortion, try to convince her to give her baby to me; I will love that child and see the child as a sign of God's love."

Surely, the peak point emotionally during the ceremony came when the Pope formally proclaimed Mother Teresa blessed, her smiling portrait was unveiled on the front of St. Peter's Basilica, and a thunderous ovation sounded across the square.

It struck me, though, how odd this all would have seemed to Mother Teresa, had someone forecast this lasting fame to her during her lifetime. She had said, often, that it is not necessary to do great things but only small things with great love. I don't think she ever fancied herself as doing anything spectacular or famous, but just trying to help people in her own little way.

It struck me, too, how clear the lesson was for the crowd to carry home. We were reminded -- in the writings of Mother Teresa that were read in the square before the Mass began -- that she had said: "Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta, find the sick, the suffering, the lonely, right there where you are -þ in your homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and schools."

Most of us, I think, left St. Peter's that day knowing that the work was unfinished, that the story goes on.

(Father Doyle, editor of The Evangelist from 1973 to 1981, is now pastor of St. Catherine of Siena parish in Albany and diocesan chancellor for public information. He was in Rome last week with a group of 23 pilgrims from the Albany Diocese.)

(10/30/03) [[In-content Ad]]