ASIA/INDIA - Mother Teresa: a life spent taking care of others

Wednesday, 31 August 2016 poverty   local churches   mother teresa   evangelization  

facebook

Mumbai (Agenzia Fides) - "Mother Teresa focused her energy on others, not on herself" and this was one of her secrets and her holiness: to take care and focus on one’s neighbor, in the awareness of the preciousness of human relationship, in which the holy Spirit and God's work are manifested. This is what Caesar D'Mello, a theologian and priest of the church of Sant'Andrea in Mumbai says to Agenzia Fides, in view of the canonization celebration to be held on September 4 at the Vatican.
The priest recalls his personal encounter with Mother Teresa. As a young priest, Fr. Caesar had already met her in the 1970s, thanks to Archbishop Alan de Lastic, "and even then Mother Teresa was treated with respect and reverence in the Church and in Indian society", he observes. "Her greatest happiness was to take part in the Eucharist", which she considered the source of all her daily activities.
"Then - continues Fr. D'Mello - I met her again in 1980, while studying theology in Rome. Mother Teresa was invited to speak at a gathering of theologians and professors of different colleges. We were all listening to a simple and fragile nun who worked with the dying and destitute in Calcutta. She said that we must be grateful to the poor that allow us to serve them and that we must learn from them because they have much to teach us". "Her simple words touched the strings of every heart. Her brief speech was powerful and effective simply because it came from a person who was totally committed to the care of the poor and outcasts who were dying on the streets of Calcutta. The effective words are those that flow from a life totally dedicated to Christ and to the poor", he concludes. (PA-NC) (Agenzia Fides 31/08/2016)


Share: