Putting The Touch On A Place Within

Just days after Mother Teresa died, a 15-year-old girl named Teresa Martin prayed that she also could do good works. That evening, her father, Garrett Martin, a stock broker, walked out of his office and saw two Missionaries of Charity in their saris. He expressed condolence over Mother’s death. They invited him to a memorial Mass at her Gift of Peace Convent in Washington, which serves 14 patients dying of AIDS and 21 other terminally ill or homeless people.

When her dad told Teresa of the invitation, she had an answer to her prayer. I sat next to her at the Mass.

Why did she come? “Because I love Mother Teresa.”

After Mass she started her first day of volunteer work. Her dad just stood around waiting, saying, “I’m so proud of her.”

This is how Mother Teresa mobilized 4,500 nuns and 100,000 volunteers for 569 missions in 120 countries to serve “the poorest of the poor.”

Another volunteer I met was Ken Hill, 64, a retired budget director of an affluent suburban school system. Each week he delivers food from his Potomac church to feed all the patients and 52 sisters.

Sister Pietra, the local superior of the Missionaries of Charity, said, “I miss Mother Teresa badly. But she has found the fulfillment of her life to meet Jesus.”

I asked her to explain Mother’s extraordinary gift.

She smiled, “‘She used to say, ‘It is God’s work. He does the thinking and writing. I am only a pencil in his hand.’

“Our work is hard. But there is a lot of joy in it. In giving, you always receive.”

Asked for an example, her face brightened and stories came tumbling out. “We see miracles of growth in people. One man had so much suffering, anger and rejection. He had never been loved and became unlovable. He was so demanding, it took a lot patience to serve him.

“Our kindness prompted a complete change in this man. He became calm. At the end he kept asking, ‘Why do you love me?’ “‘We love you because you are a child of God,’ we replied.”

Another man was bedridden and angry because of his sickness. One day he said, “Tomorrow, I want you to cut my hair, shave and I want a new suit. I’m going to meet Jesus and I want to look decent for him.”

He got his haircut and suit, heard of another patient who lay paralyzed, and asked to have his wheelchair pushed close to the immobile figure. Taking his cane with him, he said to the semi-conscious man, “I hear you can walk anytime. Here is my cane. I give it to you. Let me pray for you.”

The new man in Christ died the next day in his new suit.

Mother Teresa had steel inside. I saw her stand up in front of President Clinton and the first lady at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1995. She began by quoting Jesus: “Come, enter the kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

She told of going to a Western nursing home where patients “had everything - good food, a comfortable place, but everyone was looking toward the door.” No one was smiling.

Since even the dying ones smile in her homes, she asked a sister why they were so sad. “They are hoping a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten.”

Mother Teresa said, “This neglect to love brings spiritual poverty.” She asked whether anyone was neglecting someone in their own family “who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick. Are we there? Are we willing to give until it hurts?” A wince flashed over the affluent crowd.

Suddenly, what she said was shocking: “The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” She knew that Clinton’s support of abortion had won him many female voters.

“We are fighting abortion by adoption. … Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. In Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortion.”

Applause burst forth, rolling across the room. But Bill and Hillary Clinton sat like stones.

As I attended Mass with young Teresa on one side and an AIDS patient on the other, my most memorable image was a sign painted on the wall next to a crucifix of Jesus: “I THIRST.”

“When you serve here you develop an unquenchable thirst to serve God,” said Father Dan Leary, a priest for only 90 days but a three-year volunteer. “All who come here are changed.”

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