Mother Teresa: A Biography (9 page)

From all the sisters, Mother Teresa asked obedience. Those unable to eat the allotted five
chapattis
a day were not considered Missionaries of Charity material and were asked to leave. Other requirements of the order included speaking English at all times. Those who came to the order without finishing their studies were to complete them in addition to their work at the Motherhouse.

The nuns made other sacrifices in the face of cultural taboos. For instance, realizing that the congregation needed people with medical training, Mother Teresa asked some of the first sisters to earn medical degrees even though studying medicine meant mixing with men under conditions of unacceptable intimacy. Nevertheless, the women did as they were asked even though it meant being further ostracized from their families and cultural traditions.

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Mother Teresa asked nothing of others that she would not do herself.

She worked with her sisters and was protective of their well being. She also continued to trust that God would meet the needs of the congregation. This faith and devotion to God often rewarded Mother Teresa and her sisters in amazing ways. On one occasion when there was no food in the house, a knock came at the door. A woman standing outside had with her bags of rice. She later told Mother Teresa that she did not have any intention of going there, but for some reason came bringing the rice. That evening, Mother Teresa and the sisters had their dinner.

In another instance, Father Henry asked Mother Teresa for some money to print some leaflets. She searched the house and found only two rupees, which she gladly turned over to Father Henry. As he was leaving, he remembered a letter that he had brought for her. Opening it, Mother Teresa discovered a gift of 100 rupees. When a newcomer arrived at the Motherhouse, there was no pillow available for her; Mother Teresa offered the young woman hers, but the sisters refused to allow it, stating that she needed the pillow for her own rest. Mother Teresa insisted and while doing so, an Englishman appeared at the Motherhouse with a mattress.

He was leaving the country and wanted to know if the sisters would have any use for his mattress. This and other events demonstrated to Mother Teresa the power of faith as well as God’s providence when people completely surrendered their lives into his care.

As the sisters soon learned, there was great joy to be had from small things when living the life of the poor. One of the first Christmas holidays celebrated by the group was an example. One sister recalled how on Christmas morning the sisters awoke to find that the dining area had been decorated with streamers and balloons; by each place at the table was a white paper bag with a sister’s name on it. Inside of each bag were letters from home and gifts from Mother Teresa. All the sisters received pencils; one remembered gifts of a bar of soap, a clothes peg, St. Christopher and Miraculous Medals, sweets, and a balloon. The sister remembered how thrilled she was by the gifts and Mother Teresa’s generosity toward her congregation.

REACHING OUT

By 1953, the work of the Missionaries of Charity had grown tremendously. On April 12, 1953, the initial group of Missionary Sisters took their first vows in Calcutta’s Roman Catholic Cathedral; during the same ceremony, Mother Teresa took her final vows as a Missionary of Charity.

She also now succeeded Archbishop Périer as superior of the order she 6 0

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had founded. Despite his early resistance to Mother Teresa’s efforts, the archbishop had demonstrated his full support in the order’s early years, believing, as many others did, that God’s hand clearly was at work in his city.

In time, Mother Teresa and her sisters became a familiar sight in the streets of Calcutta. As news of their endeavors spread, Mother Teresa was asked on occasion to speak about her work. As a result, many groups and organizations pledged their aid to carry out the work of the Missionaries of Charity. It took time, but soon doctors, nurses, and other lay people were volunteering their time and skills to help Calcutta’s poor. As the number of volunteer medical personnel increased, so did the number of dispensaries to help tend to the sick and dying. Mother Teresa was also able to increase the number of schools in the slum areas; with more teachers, more poor children had the opportunity to learn how to read and write.

Even the City of Calcutta eventually relented: whenever there were 100

pupils studying with the Missionaries of Charity in one area, the city agreed to build a small school building for them.

Despite these strides, Mother Teresa felt that still she and her congregation were not doing enough to help the growing numbers of poor. In the wake of Indian independence, conditions had worsened throughout India and particularly in Calcutta. Malnutrition and overcrowded living conditions contributed to even more illness and suffering. Even the governing body of the city, the Calcutta Corporation, was powerless to help.

In the 3,000 official slums in the city, there resided more than two million persons. The overcrowded conditions forced many to seek shelter on railway platforms, in alleyways, or on city streets. Prisons were overflowing and hospitals had to turn away people because they had no room.

Even with the help of relief organizations, the city struggled to take care of the problem. As a result, the sick and the starving, weakened by disease and hunger, simply dropped wherever they were to die. To many, Mother Teresa and her nuns were but a small trickle of hope in a growing sea of suffering.

THE MISSIONARY OF CHARITY WAY

Confronted with the changes that the Roman Catholic Church faced as a result of Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, many of the Church’s religious orders struggled to find their place in the changing world. The pope’s goal was to revitalize the church, and he believed that changes in the liturgy and in some of the rules governing religious orders would make an effective beginning. However, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, many religious orders not only im-

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plemented changes, but tried to make the religious vocations more meaningful and pertinent to keep in step with the twentieth century.

Not everyone welcomed these changes; some orders preferred the old ways.

Beginning in the 1970s, many religious orders underwent dramatic transformations as the Catholic Church struggled to become more modern and accessible to its followers. For some women’s religious congregations, these changes meant modifying the nun’s habit, and in some cases completely forgoing it. Many nuns believed that if one was to be of genuine service in the world, then one must wear the clothes of the real world. Others believed that by leaving behind their religious habit, which was often viewed as a barrier to working with the public, they would make people feel more comfortable around them. The practice of doing away with the religious uniform also encouraged individuality among the order’s nuns, and hopefully along with it, one’s particular talents. Others eased their rules in order to attract potential applicants to their order, especially those women with backgrounds in social services, medicine, or other advanced degrees.

However, in the case of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa made virtually no concessions; even today, the order continues to attract many young women who wish to take the vows of extreme poverty and give their lives over to the service of the poor. Everything about the life of a Missionary of Charity emphasizes the long-held ideal of caring feminin-ity; that is, the traditional role of women as caretakers subservient to men.

It is an ideal that also asks one to suppress one’s own will for the common good. The image is a particularly potent one in Western culture, where a woman in a nun’s habit ministering to the needs of the ill and poor is seen as the epitome of female selflessness, despite the efforts of the modern-day women’s movement to counteract this image.

Even the manner in which Mother Teresa spoke of her order reinforced this ideal. To Mother Teresa, she and her nuns were the wives of Christ crucified, their bond to God like a mystical marriage; she described the love that the Missionaries of Charity professed for Jesus in terms similar to the love between husband and wife. This is an even more dramatic contrast to the thinking of many of today’s religious orders, who find the notion of a nun as a bride of Christ not only outdated, but ridiculous.

In establishing the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa also made it clear that she would brook no interference from priests, or meddling, no matter how well-intentioned, from outsiders. She also deflected any advice about how to teach her nuns. This rigid sense of control has had some impact on the order. Although one can understand the decision not to 6 2

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have televisions in the homes of monastics, it was harder for outsiders to understand the absence of newspapers or magazines; in fact, there is little in the way of reading material at any of the homes. Being informed about world events, Mother Teresa thought, was a distraction. She preferred to put her trust in God, who would make known to her all that she needed to know. What books were available for the nuns tended to be of a religious nature, such as books on piety or the lives of the saints. Except for the nuns who became medical doctors, Mother Teresa did not want her sisters to be any better informed or educated than those they were trying to serve, a startling contrast to orders that encouraged their members to seek advanced college degrees or specialized training.

This practice drew a great deal of criticism from within the Church.

Some officials believe that education is necessary, not just the knowledge of theology but also of secular disciplines. Mother Teresa’s attitude toward education is especially puzzling since she herself valued education.

Perhaps she came to regard education, like wealth and worldly goods, as a source of vanity that the devout ought to sacrifice to the glory of the Lord.

Mother Teresa left her imprint on almost every aspect of the order.

The old-fashioned discipline and rigid obedience required was and is today, more than some can bear. Some did not like being told what to do all the time. Others felt that even as the women grew older and more senior in the order’s hierarchy, they were often forced to maintain a student-teacher relationship with Mother Teresa. For many, that clearly was no longer appropriate and had the effect of preventing the women from growing up. Some even felt uncomfortable using the term “Mother”

as it denoted a childish dependence on Mother Teresa, which she encouraged.

Others, though, found themselves drawn to the Missionaries of Charity precisely because they did not have to grow up and make difficult decisions that adulthood requires. The black-and-white life of the order is such that those who are immature will have an easier time coping with its rigors than those who are prone to questioning and learning. This is in contrast to what was taking place in other orders, as rules became more relaxed and nuns allowed to make more of their own decisions. The reforms of Vatican Council II, ironically, also contributed to a drop in vocations.

In 1990, the number of women in religious orders had dropped by more than half, from a record high of almost a million women serving as nuns in 1970. Today, third-world vocations continue to increase, while in the West, the numbers continue to decline.

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THE INCULTURATION OF POVERTY

One of the greatest challenges that faced Mother Teresa, and that continues today, was the difficult balance of realism and idealism. In some cases, the Missionaries of Charity, in their zeal to serve the poor, have made some questionable choices. In one instance the sisters removed a ra-diator from a house because the poor had no heat in their homes. According to a nun who is a member of the Sisters of Sion, the act was patronizing to the poor. . . . We are learning from the poor, the way we should respond to the poor is that we are in this together. Some of us are emotionally poor or poor in education.

Of course you can deprive yourself but I have had the opportunities of a good education, there I’m a rich person; we must recognize that and not play at being poor. You can live alongside the poor but you must also be realistic.4

While Mother Teresa and her nuns adapted to life among the poor in India and later in other Third World countries, when it came time to establish homes in the West, the order often faced a different set of circumstances. To what extent should the order inculturate, that is adapt to the culture of the poor in the West, which is often very different from that in the third world. For instance, in establishing a shelter for women in the United States, did the sisters have an obligation to make sure that the women they helped not only received housing and meals, but also help to navigate the extensive red tape of the various social agencies to find aid, jobs, or other support services? The Missionaries of Charity would say no; that their vows do not extend to doing this type of work. However, there are those in the Church who would come to feel otherwise.

In one instance, Mother Teresa’s rigorous attitude toward austerity for her order made headlines. In San Francisco, the order was given a former convent. When Mother Teresa arrived at the house, she was very unhappy, telling the bishop that the house was too big and elegant for their purposes. As a result, the mattresses, carpets, and many pieces of furniture were thrown out of the house into the street. A boiler that provided hot water was also taken out. Some in the order believed the matter could have been taken care of more discreetly and were unhappy at the ruckus the incident caused. On another occasion, Mother Teresa scolded her nuns for storing some canned tomatoes. She lectured them, reminding them that the order did not store food, but relied on God to provide for them.