She Was ‘Conscience Of The World’

This can be a cynical and inattentive world, a place swirling too swiftly for proper consideration of matters spiritual, sacred and splendid.

Now comes a moment for reconsideration.

Mother Teresa had been revered as a living saint. She influenced and improved millions of lives. One of those lives belongs to Jim Towey, recognized in South Florida as a prominent crusader for the disadvantaged.

“She once described herself as a pencil in the hands of God with which he writes love letters,” said Towey, 40, who served as chief of Florida’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) and now runs the Florida Commission on Aging and Dignity.

“One of those little love letters found its way into my post office box. I don’t know how, but I won the lottery.”

Obviously, this is not a reference to a financial bonanza. He refers to another magnitude of fortune.

“In a world of superficiality and appearances, she was the real thing,” Towey said. “She was authentic and loving. She was not interested in class distinctions between rich and poor, young and old.

“She saw everyone as a child of God. She fostered my own spiritual life, and I owe everything to her.”

Towey met Mother Teresa 12 years ago in Calcutta. He had just completed a seven-year stint as a congressional aide. He had not found it to be a particularly uplifting experience. He hoped spending time as a volunteer would restore his spirit.

“I was very disillusioned in my faith and I was curious to see someone who was living her faith,” Towey said.

“I met her on the morning of Aug. 20, 1985. I remember every facet of that day. I remember her coming out of the reception area with the energy of a school girl.

“When people talk about religious conversions, people think of bells sounding and lights flashing. But I think, lots of times, religious conversion comes along in phases.

“When I look back, I realize my life began to turn around that day.”

He spent a year working for Mother Teresa in a remote Mexican village, another year working at her Washington, D.C., hospice for AIDS patients. It was there that Towey met his wife, Mary Griffith, who also was serving Mother Teresa.

They married in 1992. They had a son 11 months later. They had another son last August - on Mother Teresa’s birthday - and a third child recently. All three children have been held by Mother Teresa, blessed by Mother Teresa.

“Mary and I, we have a lot of tears right now,” Towey said. “But the tears will turn to joy, because she is in heaven.”

Towey and his wife remain devoted to Mother Teresa’s teachings of simplicity and purity.

For one thing, they do not watch television programs. Too much of what comes over the tube is depressing or degrading, Towey said.

They also will not yield to hopelessness. Towey ran a massive, unwieldy, under-budgeted and often-criticized agency. The legislature unceremoniously dumped him in May 1995 after three and a half years of state service in a move widely viewed as a political slap at his friend, Gov. Lawton Chiles.

On Friday, Chiles called Mother Teresa “our world’s greatest humanitarian.” “What a wonderful life she had,” Chiles said, “and what a legacy she leaves to us.”

Towey said he rolled with the punches, tried to focus on the small islands of hope he managed to erect in a sea of misery at HRS.

“I remember what Mother told me: ‘Some say the work I do is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is better for that drop.”’ Towey does not boast about such things. Humility is a virtue. That is something he learned from Mother Teresa - not by words but by deed.

“She’s a saint and I’m not,” he said.

So, what is it that the world saw in Mother Teresa? What compelled so many people to admire her work and her spirit, to monitor so closely her health and, ultimately, her death?

Towey: “She was the conscience of the world. The world needs that and secretly wants that.

“Yes, for a while, the world will mourn, because it knows Mother is no longer on the Earth with us. But as Mother always told us:

“‘God will provide. God will find other pencils to use.”’

MEMO: Martin Merzer writes for the Miami Herald.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Martin Merzer Knight-Ridder Newspapers Mark Silva and Steve Bousquet, of that newspaper, also contributed to this column.