Rome, October 23, 2005
Sunday Mission

My dear missionaries,

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is the Congregation’s protectress for the year 2006. I am certain that this choice will please all of you because Mother Teresa is someone we have known well and admired. Several of us have even had the good fortune of meeting her in person. How could we ever forget that marvelous May 24, 1987 when she accepted our invitation and came to visit our Generalate? On that occasion she spoke to us of God’s tender love for the very poor, of the missionary who is sent as a representative of God’s compassionate love for people. She encouraged us forget everything else and go forward on the path set out for us by our Founder – the path to holiness as missionaries. We genuinely believe that Mother Teresa’s is a contemporary holiness which will help us to live our religious life in service to those the Lord has entrusted to our care today.

The primary reason we chose Mother Teresa as our protectress was the fact that her spirit seems similar in so many aspects to the spirit of our missionary family. In this letter I hope to elaborate these similar aspects and explore Mother Teresa’s thought and exact words, words that are incomparably simple and powerful.

1. A brief biography

Mother Teresa describes herself this way: “I am an Albanian by birth and Indian by citizenship. With regard to my faith – I am a Catholic nun. Because of my vocation I belong to the world. But as far as my heart is concerned I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus.” Or more simply: “I am a little pencil in God’s hand. Nothing more. It is He who does the thinking. It is He who does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with all of this. The pencil is only there to be used.”

She was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Albania, the last of five children in a Catholic family. She was baptized Gonxha Agnes. Her father died when she was eight years old and she was raised strictly but lovingly by her mother, Drone, who had an enormous impact on her character and vocation. From her earliest childhood, she tells us, she had a deep love of Our Lady and from the time of her First Holy Communion she also felt a love for souls. Her religious education took place in the world of her parish – Sacred Heart – which was staffed by the Jesuits. She was very much involved in parish activities. During that time she eagerly read the letters of Yugoslav missionaries working in Calcutta. Her interest in the outside world grew as she began to appreciate the world wide mission of the Church.

In 1928 when she was eighteen years old Gonxha Agnes followed her missionary inclination and joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary – the “Sisters of Loreto” in Dublin. The Rule of the Sisters of Loreto was inspired by the spirituality of St. Ignatius. Here her desire “to help all men” find their way to heaven grew. She chose the name Maria Teresa in honor of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She explained this choice with words that are almost a synthesis of her spirituality: “Many saints have gone before us to show us the way, but I like the simple ones – such as St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus. I chose to take her name because she did ordinary things with extraordinary love.” How can one fail to see the spirit of our Father Founder in these words – “to live the ordinary in an extraordinary way?”
Because of her passion for the missions she was sent to Darjeeling, India to make her novitiate in 1929. She made her temporary profession in May 1931 and was assigned to St. Mary’s School for Girls in Entally. Finally on May 24, 1937 she made her perpetual profession and became “the spouse of Jesus for all eternity.” From that day forward she was always called Mother Teresa.

The turning point of her life was September 10, 1946. She was traveling by train from Calcutta to Darjeeling for her annual retreat when she received her special “inspiration” or as she referred to it, “her call within the call.” She never really explained what happened on that day but a burning desire to satisfy Jesus’ thirst for souls took possession of her heart and became the fulcrum of her existence. It was as if Jesus had revealed how indifference to the poor caused him so much suffering and how very much Jesus wanted to be known and loved by the poor. Mother Teresa felt the urge to found a religious community, the Missionaries of Charity, that would be dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. On August 17, 1948 for the first time she put on the white sari with the blue border – the clothes of a poor woman – and left her beloved Loreto convent to enter the world of the poor. On October 17, 1950 the new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, was officially recognized by the Archbishop of Calcutta and in 1965 received Papal approval.

Mother Teresa’s dynamism did not stop there. Her ability to gather collaborators in charity around her was astounding. To respond to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor she founded the Brother Missionaries of Charity in 1973 and a female contemplative branch of her congregation in 1976. In 1979 she established the contemplative brothers and in 1984 a branch for priests: Missionary Fathers of Charity. Mother Teresa’s horizon was not limited to religious vocations. She established the Collaborators of Mother Teresa and the Sick and Suffering Collaborators for people of different faiths and nationalities who shared her commitment to humble works of love. Subsequently she founded the Lay Missionaries of Charity and in 1991 she launched the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests for the many priests who wanted to share her spirit. She saw this as “the little way to holiness.”

Finally, worn out and sick, she blessed a new Superior General for the Missionaries of Charity in March 1997. After meeting Pope John Paul II for the last time she returned to Calcutta and spent the last weeks of her life meeting with visitors and teaching her sisters. On September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa’s earthly life came to an end. Jesus carried her home. Her body was buried in the Motherhouse chapel in Calcutta. Her tomb – a simple concrete slab – quickly became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for people of all faiths, rich and poor, without distinction.

There is something heroic about the ever energetic and cheerful Mother Teresa that was apparent only after her death. Her interior life was burdened by the experience of a profound, painful and ongoing feeling of separation from God – she felt rejected and at the same time her desire for Him grew ever stronger. She called this trial: darkness. It started when she began her apostolate among the poor and lasted her whole life. Through this “darkness” Mother Teresa shared mystically in the thirst of Jesus and in his painful, burning desire for love. She shared in the abandonment felt by the poor.

2. Her vocation: the call of love

The life of a missionary begins with realization of his call from Christ. It is a personal contract with the Lord. Here is what Mother Teresa has to say about this: “For me a vocation means belonging to Jesus; the firm conviction that nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. It was not I who had to discover Jesus. It was Jesus who came and chose me. This is what a strong vocation means: we are His, we love him with inseparable love and chastity, we are free through poverty, we give ourselves completely through obedience. He is the life I want to live. He is the light I want to reflect. He is the path to the Father. He is the Love I want to love. He is the Joy I want to share. He is the Peace I want to spread around me. Jesus is everything for me. Without Him I can do nothing. I want to live only through Him, with Him and in Him.”

As is apparent for Mother Teresa a vocation can only be understood and carried out through a lifelong union of intense love with the person of Jesus. Certainly our own spirituality is on this same wavelength. I think immediately of what our Founder would say to reassure his boys: “A missionary vocation is not very complicated … it is the vocation of those who love the Lord very much and want to make Him known and to do this they are willing to make any sacrifice.” For Allamano too a vocation was a relationship of total love with the person of Jesus.

When asked why there were so few vocations in the world Mother Teresa, on more than one occasion, expressed her thoughts about today’s youth and how she wished they really were: “There’s too much wealth, too much comfort, too high quality of life – not just in families but in religious communities as well … I think we have lost the simplicity of the Gospel. Young people today no longer want to listen – they want to see. When a young girl comes to me and says she wants to join us as a sister, I tell her ‘Come and see how we live …’ Young people want to see something concrete in life and not just listen to pretty sermons. They want something real: all or nothing […] Above all young people are hungry and thirsty for the infinite. Often they don’t see God in us. And this is something they refuse to accept. We say one thing and act another. If we do not possess Jesus we cannot give Him to others. If we do not live only for Jesus we cannot make Him alive for others.”

When she spoke to young people she pulled no punches and challenged their understanding of a vocation. “A vocation involves belonging to Jesus so profoundly that nothing can separate us from His love. You and I must make our love of Jesus something living. Love takes everything and gives everything just as God gave Himself totally to us. God will not ask a Missionary of Charity how many books she has read or how many miracles she has performed rather God will ask if she has done her best out of love for Him.”

Mother Teresa’s dream and that of our Founder are the same. Our Founder thought of all his young people as people of quality – or as he called it “third class.” He was a man of experience and realism and had no illusions about the quality of his young people but he never ceased to proclaim this maxim. “The third class is the class of the generous, of those who never refuse. This is what we must be, we must say to the Lord: I will hold nothing back, I will be a holocaust.” Our Founder never had the problem of scarcity of vocations; in his time vocations were numerous; he wanted his young people to have a realistic picture of what missionary life was like and what it demanded. He wrote to Father L. Sales who was in Bologna doing vocation promotion in the seminary: “Be careful, don’t be carried away with rhetoric. Tell them the truth about the Congregation and about the discipline and spirit that keep it going.”

3. A strong proposal: the path to holiness

There is no doubt that Mother Teresa created an atmosphere that led directly to holiness of life. She did this with simplicity and determination, without affectation. For her the first step on the path towards holiness had to be realistic – i.e. the will to become holy. “With all our will we love God, we choose God, we run towards God, we reach Him and we possess Him. Often with the pretext of humility, trust or abandonment we forget to use the strength of our will. Everything depends on these words: ‘will’ or ‘I do not will’. I must invest all my energy into the phrase ‘I will’. What is a saint if not a soul that is determined, a soul that acts forcefully. Isn’t this what St. Paul meant when he wrote ‘I can do all things in Him who gives me strength?’ ‘I want to be a saint’ means: I want to strip myself of everything that is not of God; I want to squeeze my heart and empty it of everything created; I want to live in poverty and detachment. I want to renounce my own will, my own inclinations, my own whims and my own fantasies; I want to make myself a faithful slave of the Will of God.”

To religious from other congregations who sought admission to the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa would say: “Live authentically according to your own Rule. There is no need to change. All Constitutions approved by the Church contain the written word of God. For this reason we must pray for the grace to remain faithful to our Constitutions and to belong only to Jesus through Mary. There is no more certain means to achieve great holiness.” To her own missionaries she explained, “We all want to do something beautiful for God … we try to imagine every sort of mortification and sacrifice. It is enough that you pay attention to your Rules and that you live them with the greatest love for Jesus and with Jesus.”

The wisdom of the saints is that they do not feel they are special or extraordinary. “Holiness is not a luxury for the few,” Mother Teresa says, “it is simply your duty and mine. Holiness is accepting what Jesus gives us and giving to Jesus what He asks of us – with a smile. This is what doing the Will of God means. To become saints we must suffer much. Suffering generates love … it generates life in a soul.” When she was asked if being considered a saint while still alive bothered her she would simply repeat her conviction, “Each of us is what he is in the eyes of God. We are all called to be saints. Holiness is not a luxury reserved for the few, but the simple duty of everyone. There is nothing extraordinary in this. We have all been created in the image of God, to love and be loved.”

For Mother Teresa the path of holiness knew no bounds. It had to include the supreme love – martyrdom. Faced with the possibility of working in a country where she would be obliged to abandon her faith she responded: “No one can take my faith from me. If I had no alternative but to stay in such a country so that Christ’s love could reach those unhappy people, I would remain, but I would never renounce my faith. I would be willing to sacrifice my life, but never my faith.” For her “the genuine missionary is linked to the Cross where Christ showed His love.”

At this point I feel I am repeating things we have all heard many times before. Don’t we already find these thoughts in our own spirituality? With identical or very similar words our Founder had the same insights. When speaking about perfection he synthesized his thought with these words: “It is a question of a firm and decisive will.” He too urged us not to seek holiness elsewhere but to become “saints as Consolata Missionaries following the Rule and Spirit of our Congregation.” He too stated that holiness was not an ideal reserved for certain individuals; the goal of the Congregation is “the sanctification of its members – not just some but all members […] everyone is a member and everyone must become a saint; everyone must help himself.” Finally we know that the Founder was never satisfied with half-measures – he urged the greatest idealism, “even martyrdom” the full expression of unassailable faith and total love.

Mother Teresa and Allamano are in perfect agreement on one aspect that I am pleased to emphasize: striving for holiness does not mean doing what is extraordinary, but doing the small and ordinary things of life well and with great love. Let us listen to both of them without any commentary. Mother Teresa: “Doing ordinary things with extraordinary love: little things like helping the sick and homeless, helping those who are alone and unwanted, washing and cleaning for them […] we love, not in grandiose things but in little things done with great love.” Allamano: “We must do all things well, both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Our holiness consists in doing everything well from morning to evening. Cafasso said we must do good well. So you must do: do things entirely from love of God, totally in all circumstances.”

4. Jesus in the poor: a mission of love

Here perhaps we come closest to identifying with Mother Teresa. She succeeded in attracting the hearts of millions of people throughout the world with the strength of her love for Christ and her mission of love to the poorest of the poor. And who actually were these poor people? The list is long and any attempt to spell it out in detail would run the risk of making regrettable omissions. We can certainly say however that Mother Teresa’s poor included abandoned, handicapped children who lacked food and care; the boys and girls who crowd bus and train stations, young mothers and their babies who risk death by privation; women who have been kidnapped and raped – who need assistance if they are to avoid abortions; lepers – people flee them; lonely old people who need support and love; refugees; those trapped in slums with refuse, sickness and poverty. These poor people included those whose dignity had been “wounded” – the unwanted, the unloved, the abandoned, the rejected, the outcasts of society.

Mother Teresa was convinced that poor people need not just money but above all respect; they need our hands to serve them and our hearts to love them. She was more than certain that “poor people hunger not just for food – they need to be seen as human beings. They hunger for dignity and want to be treated the same as us. They hunger for our love.” For her what the poor give us is more beautiful than what we give them – they give us their love and gratitude. Moreover if we are to serve the poor we too must be poor. She would ask with disarming simplicity: “How can you really know the poor if you don’t live as they do?”

There is one fundamental and determining aspect that defines the very roots of Mother Teresa’s personality and message. It is her faith in and love for Jesus Christ. She assures us that she would not have touched a leper for ₤1,000 but for the love of Jesus she would have done so willingly. Two passages in the Gospel were especially important for Mother Teresa: the first is the cry of Jesus on the Cross – “I thirst!” (John 19,28). These words can be found over the crucifix in every Missionaries of Charity chapel. It is in their Constitutions. Mother Teresa had this written: “Our purpose is to quench the infinite, loving thirst for souls of Jesus on the Cross. We serve Jesus in the poor.” The second Gospel passage that had a decisive impact on Mother Teresa is Jesus’ response to the just at the Last Judgment: “Every time you have done it to one of these, the least of my brothers, you have done it to me.” (Matthew 25,40).

These convictions were the foundation of her whole life. This is the program Mother Teresa drew up for the Missionaries of Charity and all her collaborators: “We are not here for this work, we are here for Jesus. Everything we do we do for Him. We are first of all religious and not social workers, teachers, nurses or doctors: we are religious sisters. We serve Jesus in the poor. We seek Him out. We comfort Him in the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the orphaned and the dying. But all we do we do for Jesus. Our life has no other reason or motivation.”
Mother Teresa could speak to everyone and make herself understood with the simplest of language – the language of charity. In one meeting someone complained that she put too much emphasis on charity and too little on justice. She answered this criticism: “I’ve already told you. We take care of one individual and then if we can of another. We never take care of the masses. Our particular vocation is to love each individual right now. Others have the vocation of engaging in more long-term work. Love, tenderness and mercy constitute the real justice. We often hear it said that we spoil the poor. No one has spoiled them more than God Himself. It is a beautiful thing that there is at least one religious congregation that spoils the poor. There are already so many that spoil the rich.”

As Consolata Missionaries we are entirely at home with the concept of commitment to the missions in charity. Our Founder pointed out the same path for his sons – even if our style of mission work differs. We need only recall the words of the unforgettable Pope John Paul II in the message he sent us on the centenary of our Congregation: “From the very beginning your missionaries have combined evangelization and a serious effort to improve human conditions making care for the poor and outcast a priority. This is a style of apostolate that we would define as integral – you are concerned for all human needs. Your Founder was strong both in faith and practical, common sense. He had no doubts that humanity would welcome “a religion that promised both a future life and happiness on this earth.” The explicit proclamation of the Gospel goes hand in hand with work for liberation and human welfare.”

5. Prayer: the support of a mission of love

This high mission of love cannot sustain itself on its own; it draws strength and vigor from a life of prayer. It is easy to understand why Mother Teresa so much insisted on the need for prayer. Drawing from her own experience she taught that the beginning of prayer is the silence in which God speaks and we listen; we speak to God and He listens to us. Without prayer, one cannot be committed to spreading love to others.

Mother Teresa is a model and teacher of prayer. Hers was the prayer of a mystic and at the same time of an apostle engaged all day long in the service of the poor. She began her day seeing Jesus in the consecrated bread; all day long she continued to see him in the tortured bodies of the poor. She prayed in the midst of her work, “with Jesus, through Jesus and in Jesus.” In her life there was a balance and unity between the heavenly and earthly. She found no conflict between prayer and work. In her own words: “Work need not necessarily interrupt prayer, nor should prayer interrupt work. I remind our sisters and brothers constantly that our day is made up of twenty-four hours with Jesus. If we do our work with Jesus, through Jesus and in Jesus, our work becomes prayer because for twenty-four hours every day we are touching Him, loving Him and being in His presence. This is what makes us contemplatives in the midst of the world – we live in His presence twenty-four hours a day: He is present in the starving, the naked, the homeless, the unwanted, the unloved and the neglected.” Prayer was her food and her support, as she put it: “Without prayer I couldn’t work for even half-an-hour.”

She called the fourth vow of the Missionaries of Charity, “the vow of love” – a promise to “wholeheartedly offer free service to the poorest of the poor. To do this,” she said, “the Missionary of Charity must live a life saturated with the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we see Christ in the form of bread and in the poor we see him in the form of suffering humanity. The Eucharist and the poor represent the same love.”
When we stop to think of what living the experience of Christ in a world so complex and contradictory as ours means we think immediately of Mother Teresa and her involvement with the needs and sufferings of mankind. In her work there was no distinction between faith and understanding, between faith and action. Her belief found expression and justification in the context of her daily life. One might say that Mother Teresa translated and exemplified for today’s Church and the entire world Paul’s Christological hymn in the letter to the Philippians: the Son of God did not jealously cling to His divine nature but stripped Himself, became flesh and died on the Cross.

We can also note her inner freedom regarding prayer – to the extent that she gave it an unparalleled ecumenical mark. She was so deeply in love with Christ, her only Savior, that she could say: “Whatever our religion we must pray together.” She even suggested words for this prayer: “My Lord I love You. My Lord I have faith in You. Help us love each other as You love us.”

In our Congregation as well there is a superabundance of riches in teaching and example that prayer is the irreplaceable support of a missionary; this teaching and example comes to us directly from our Founder. He was a man of God, a model and teacher of prayer. He could not conceive of his missionaries working all day long without praying. He said in no uncertain terms: “A priest who does not pray much is not a genuine priest. And a missionary? What can you expect someone to accomplish when he is ignorant of the very thing that keeps him united to God?” The most important admonition he gave anyone leaving for the missions was this: “Be men of prayer […] Otherwise if you are not men of prayer you will be useless channels of God’s grace … We will do good only to the extent that we are united to Our Lord.” Finally he said, “We must pray much precisely because we are missionaries.”

6. The Mission: love in action

It is worth examining more closely Mother Teresa’s “missionary” spirit. I will attempt to follow her thought starting with a basic principle that explains her person and the work she accomplished: the love of Jesus is necessarily a mission.

First of all we are struck by Mother Teresa’s creativity in the apostolate. This is not just the result of her intelligent response to the world around her but derives from her burning zeal. Her acute perception of suffering in this world – almost an obsession – moved her to activity, not just intense but creative activity. It was an astounding creativity that sought out new and diverse solutions and in the beginning not everyone understood the apostolic significance of these new solutions. As someone said she was “Christ’s bulldozer.”

We can see the reason for this creativity in Mother Teresa’s own words: “Zeal for souls is the result and proof of true love of God: we cannot but be consumed with the desire to save souls. Zeal is the test of love; the test of zeal is devotion to His cause, life and energy spent in working for souls …” “I think God is asking us to give ourselves without reserve. I see no difference between those of us who work in the slums and those religious who work among the rich. We must give Christ to the people, to souls – not to their property or to their poverty. Jesus wants to be given to university students and the rich just as he wants to be given to the dying, the lepers and the very poor. Missionaries as such are not so much interested in where they work but in souls – they want to bring souls to God and bring God to souls. This is a true missionary. Like Christ he is sent into the world to go about doing good and preaching the Word without distinguishing between rich or poor. Being a missionary is not determined by what one does or how much one does but rather in how much love, how much sharing with Christ, how much we allow Christ to give Himself to people. This is what is important for Him.” As
Mother Teresa was wont to tell her missionaries: “Let Jesus use you without asking your advice.”

It was precisely because she was so rooted in Christ that Mother Teresa felt free to pursue the paths of charity wherever the inner voice of the Spirit led her. This made it possible for her heart to devise all manner of new charitable endeavors. This is the only explanation for her apostolic “genius.”

Certainly Mother Teresa’s mission was founded on a strong and enlightened spirituality. Her spiritual journey demonstrates how important it is to balance contemplative life and prayer with practical, loving activity. To all appearances it is a simple spirituality but behind Mother Teresa’s simplicity lie years of experience that produced a maturity of faith, strength of will, ability to sacrifice, understanding of reality, acceptance of people and a wisdom that in our opinion is incomparable.

As we know she often repeated the words of Jesus: “I was hungry, naked, sick, homeless and you did this for me.” Her whole spirituality and her whole apostolate is founded on the unconditional acceptance of these words. For her faith and love went together and complemented each other. Christ transmitted his light and life to us and through us to the whole world. When the suffering see us they are attracted to Christ. We see Christ in the poor and the poor see Christ in our works of charity. Service given to men is service given to God.

In a talk given in Calcutta, John Paul II quoted Mother Teresa: “This type of Gospel service of the poor is a concrete realization of Jesus’ Messianic agenda to proclaim the good news to the poor.”



7. Mother Teresa’s personal mission

Undoubtedly Mother Teresa had her own particular and specific mission in today’s world. Anyone who met her or heard her talks went away with the strong impression of her personal and very intense loving relationship with the Lord Jesus. It was as if she could speak of nothing else but the love of Christ for all human beings and especially for the poor!

Her personal mission was to bring God, through the love of Jesus, to poor people wherever they were. Slums, streets, canals, bushes, rubbish bins, railway stations, bus stops, public places – these were Mother Teresa’s favorite places. These are the places where suffering was most acute and where she found the poor. She believed that extreme poverty was joined to extreme suffering. She knew from experience that there was much suffering everywhere but she also knew that there was a great hunger for God and for love. There was hunger not just for bread but for love, kindness, concern; this is the poverty that causes humankind so much suffering.

Mother Teresa knew how to make sense of this situation from her own perspective, the perspective of faith. She believed that when suffering became a participation in the passion and death of Christ it could be a marvelous gift and a sign of love. In Christ we see that love is the greatest gift; through His loving acceptance of suffering He paid the forfeit for our sin. In Christ we see that suffering can become a means to greater love, greater generosity. In this context we can see the difference between simple social work and what Mother Teresa was doing: “Without suffering and participating in the passion of Christ,” she said, “our activity would be simple social work, very good and useful in itself, but it would not be the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ redeems us by sharing our life, our sufferings, our agony, our death.”

Mother Teresa’s supernatural understanding of reality led her to emphasize an aspect that is not always easy to understand or accept but that she believed was of the utmost importance: suffering in all its aspects - pain, humiliation, sickness and failure - is the “kiss” of Jesus. She considered the very poor as a great blessing; their very life is a prayer and without knowing it they are continually interceding for us. Through these people Christ is really living out His passion.

Another aspect of Mother Teresa’s personal mission was the joy with which she gave herself. She tried to convey this spirit of joy to her missionaries: “Our spirit is one of total surrender to God, loving trust of others and cheerfulness with all. We must accept suffering with joy; we must live a life of poverty with cheerful confidence and joy in helping Jesus among the poorest of the poor. God loves a cheerful giver. He who gives with a smile is giving in the best possible way.”

Mother Teresa’s personal mission was brilliantly synthesized on those famous “calling cards” – as she called them – on which was written in ascending order her inner convictions: “The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.”

To conclude these thoughts on Mother Teresa’s personal mission let us listen to her own words during the first world retreat for priests: “One day they brought us a man, half of whose body was consumed by worms. I went and washed him and as I was doing this task he looked at me and said, ‘Why do you bother to do something like this? Everyone else rejects me.’ ‘I love you,’ I answered. ‘I love you because Jesus is sharing His passion with you. You for me are Jesus coming in the most painful guise.’ He then asked, ‘Are you too sharing in that passion?’ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘I share only in the joy of loving you and Jesus in you.’ At this point the Hindu gentleman said, ‘Glory be to Jesus Christ.’ He realized that he was loved.”

As a great missionary, Mother Teresa reminds us spontaneously of our Founder’s original inspiration and the very heart of our missionary charism. Allamano had a deep Christocentric spirituality that perceived the pre-eminent fact about Jesus: that He was sent by the Father. He thought so highly of the missionary vocation precisely because it so closely imitated the identity of Jesus: “the state that most closely imitates Our Lord, that comes closest to Him, is the most perfect.” On the strength of this conviction he pointed out to us: “So you too must not just have the spirit of Our Lord, you must have the very thoughts, words and actions of Our Lord. You must be missionaries in your head, your mouth and your heart. Think about this.”

For the Founder being a missionary meant being a co-worker in the ongoing redemptive work of Jesus. Note: “co-workers,” not independent agents, but “co-workers with Jesus” involved in work going on now. Speaking of the missionary’s “apostolic vocation’ the Founder said: “The missionary is called to cooperate with God in the salvation of those souls who do not yet know Him; to take an active part and to consecrate himself to the great work of converting the world. This is therefore essentially a divine work.” (Conf. IMC, I, 650). He concluded with the words of St. Paul: “We are co-workers with God” (I Cor 3,9).

Conclusion

There is so much else we could say. I do not doubt that during this year, 2006, we will have a chance to pursue Mother Teresa’s insights more deeply both individually and in community. I trust that what I have said with simplicity will encourage and help everyone.

I would like to close with an explicit reference to Our Lady. Mother Teresa loved Mary tenderly and felt she was involved in the mission of the Mother of the Redeemer. This is what she thought: “The moment Christ entered her life was at the First Holy Communion. She immediately wanted to offer Jesus to others. Mary was in a sense the first Missionary of Charity, the first messenger of God’s love. From then until now you and I are still receiving Jesus. Like Mary we have the great privilege of bringing Him to others.”

This is how Mother Teresa prayed to Our Lady: “Mary, Mother of Jesus, give me your heart, so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, so full of love and humility, so that I can receive Jesus in the Bread of Life and love Him as you loved Him and serve Him in the poorest of the poor.”

We cannot conclude these reflections without once more returning to the heart of our Founder. He developed our Congregation at the feet of Our Lady, the Consolata – so much so that he thought of her as the real foundress. Even today he reassures us that we are her specially loved sons. The name we so proudly bear must goad us into being what we ought to be. Our Founder could see no other way: “No one becomes a saint if he is not devoted to Our Lady […] this is something that characterizes all saints.”

Let us accept the ever cogent invitation of Pope John Paul II’s centenary message: “With the help of Our Lady, the Consolata, dearest brothers, you spread genuine “consolation” – salvation, that is Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind.”

I entrust our Congregation and each of you to the protection of Our Lady, the Consolata, to our Blessed Founder and to Blessed Mother Teresa. I greet and wish all of you every good thing in the Lord.

Father Aquiléo Fiorentini, IMC
Father General