“In 1963 the Hindu-Muslim riots were happening in Calcutta. People were trapped in pockets all over the city. Mother called me to her room and told me about the bodies of Muslim patients who were lying in Kalighat and could not be taken to the Muslim place of burial. She needed my father’s help. My dad at the time was a colonel in the army. I rang Dad and told him the problem and he came over immediately…Mother and I went to my parents’ home at Fort William, where Dad changed into his army uniform and got a contingent of army vehicles to accompany us to Kalighat. We spent the day taking the bodies of the Muslim patients to their burial place and the bodies of the Hindu patients to the burning ghats.
We then went to the Fatima Shrine. There Father Henry was saying Mass while the slums around the area were burning, and Christian people who had no home were huddled in the shrine. I remember Mother running up to the altar and whispering to Father Henry to finish Mass, while Dad and I and the rest of the army personnel helped the Christian people into the trucks, and we took them to a shelter on Lower Circular Road…I have never been so afraid and so exhilarated at the same time. There was fire all around us. Masses of burning Molotov cocktails were being hurled down the streets, and we, with hundreds of men, women, and children, were trying to survive. I was just a young novice, but I saw that, while Calcutta burned with hatred, there was Mother Teresa helping the Muslim, the Hindu, and the Christian. Her love for her neighbor knew no bounds. Mother never forgot that day, and whenever she spoke to me about Dad, she would recall the horror of that day and the lives we saved.”
Stories I hear from the Middle East and from Nigeria make me wonder what I would do if religious war or life-threatening religious persecution came to central Kentucky. This story, from testimony given for Mother Teresa’s canonization, gives me pause. How courageous to live my faith would I be?
1 & 2 Maccabees
This week’s first readings come from 1 and 2 Maccabees. They are historical narratives around the Jewish struggles with Greek domination about a hundred years before Christ. The Greeks, though pagan, considered their religion superior to Jewish faith. They attempted to force compliance with their practices, and they profaned and tore down the temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabeus brothers led a revolt, and threw off the Greeks for a while. However, there was no sense of a “return” of Jewish rule.
Today’s reading sets the stage. The sentences in it that give me pause are:
“Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, each abandoning his particular customs. All the Gentiles conformed to the command of the king, and many children of Israel were in favor of his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath….Terrible affliction was upon Israel.”
Reading those words, praying and thinking from those words, I come to the question: What of my Christian faith would I stand up for under life-threatening circumstances?
The Witness of the St. Mother Teresa Story
As I think and pray about that, the St. Mother Teresa story intrigues me. At the core of the core of the core of St. Mother Teresa’s faith was an absolute fidelity to the teachings, the practices, and the structures of the Catholic Church. Yet, equally core of the core of the core of her faith was her practice of “love your neighbor as yourself” in multiple life-threatening circumstances.
I’m pretty sure that Mother Teresa would have died a martyr to stand up for the Eucharist if she were called to do it. But, she RISKED her life to save the lives of others many times. And she SPENT her life to help others every day. Would I do that under fire?
Three of the documents of Vatican Council II focus on living Christian faith in a diverse world: Unitatis Redintegratio is a Decree on Ecumenism; Nostra Aetate is a Declaration on Relations with Other Religions; and Dignitatis Humanae is a Declaration on Religious Freedom. All three are relatively short documents.
Yet those three documents give us marching orders to live our faith as Mother Teresa did in today’s opening story: live boldly, anchored solidly in our Faith, yet live with respect for different faiths and the people who practice them.
“I WANT TO SEE!”
I think God must truly want me to SEE something I do not see, because it seems this year I have drawn the lot to write again and again on stories of Jesus healing blindness. We have the story of Bartimaeus again today. Again I hear him say: “LORD, I WANT TO SEE.”
I struggle to SEE HOW to walk a path of integrity within our pluralistic world, standing as strong in my faith as the Maccabeus brothers were, yet also being as self-giving and accepting of those who see matters of faith or morals differently as St. Mother Teresa.
“Lord, I want to see.”
More Guidance
In another St. Mother Teresa book I found this quote from her:
“I was invited last year to China, and one of the Chinese talk people asked, “And what is a communist to you?” And I said, “A child of God, my brother, my sister.” And nobody had another word to say. Nobody. Perfect silence. The next day in all the communist papers, “Mother Teresa says, ‘A communist is a child of God, my brother, my sister.’” And I didn’t tell a lie and it is true, because the same loving hand created you, created me, created that man in the street. And it is there where love must be shown.”
Prayer
Lord, is there a way to make me an instrument of Your Truth and an instrument of your Peace at the same time? How do I stand up for You in all circumstances, yet also love those who see things differently—who even may persecute or harm You or me? How do I do that with humility and hospitality? LORD, I WANT TO SEE! Even if all around me were to burn with hatred, let me live your Love.
NOTE: First Mother Teresa quote was from A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve. Ed. by Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, New York: Image Books, 2016, p 117-118.
Second Mother Teresa quote from Love: A Fruit Always in Season: Daily Meditations by Mother Teresa. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987, p 134.
