Happy Sunday,
If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?
James 2:15-16
Mother Teresa
In 1947, in the wake of WWII, the British government ended its colonial rule over southern Asia. The land was partitioned into India and Pakistan, meant to separate Hindus and Muslims, but the borders were hastily drawn, and millions of people found themselves suddenly on the “wrong” side. An estimated 10-15 million people fled across the new borders, and 1-2 million people were killed in communal violence. Villages were burned. Families disappeared overnight.
Calcutta, a city near India’s new border with East Pakistan, was an epicenter of unrest. Its packed-mud streets were filled with disease, starvation, and death.
That was when Mother Teresa experienced her “call within a call.”
After nearly twenty years as a Loreto nun teaching at a girls’ school in Calcutta, she felt God calling her to leave the convent and serve “the poorest of the poor.”
In 1948, she traded a traditional habit for her now-iconic white sari with a blue border, and walked into Calcutta’s slums. When she saw someone in need, she helped, no matter their condition. She taught children by tracing letters in the dirt, cleaned the sores of people dying on the street, and whispered prayers into failing ears. In 1952, she opened Nirmal Hriday (“Pure Heart”), a home where the destitute could be washed, fed, and allowed to die with dignity. No one, and no condition, was unworthy of her attention. When asked about her approach, she said:
“I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend him.”
I am convicted by the simplicity of her service. She didn't create peace between India and Pakistan, but brought peace to the suffering. She didn't solve the systemic problems facing the slums, but she brought hope to their streets. She had to 'ignore' urgent needs of the day in order to radically love those who were easiest to ignore.
What do you think?
Jason
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