By Jeffrey A. Beer Jr. –
Born on August 26th, 1910, Mother Teresa is a well known nun who spent her life serving the poorest of the poor on the streets of Calcutta, India. She devoted her entire life to taking care severely impoverished people- giving them medical treatment, loving them, serving them, and even helping them to die with dignity. At only twelve years old, Mother Teresa was faithful, and thought she might live a consecrated life. Six years later, at the age of eighteen, she did just that, and left her family and friends behind in order to join the Missionary Sisters of Loreto.
After a short time teaching as a young nun, Teresa felt a calling to serve the poor and lonely people she saw around her. And so with no one to help her and no money whatsoever, she went out into the streets of Calcutta teaching poor children and tending to the needs of the starving and infirmed people. Teresa got more people involved, and started her own religious order. This new order, the Missionaries of Charity, would soon open schools, hospices, and hospitals in Calcutta, and then throughout the world.
Today, they operate in over 130 different countries, and their mission is to care for “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” Mother Teresa’s example can teach us many things. For one thing, she responded to a calling she felt to serve the poor, and her incredible heart of service caused her to treat even the lowest of the low with such love and dignity. And her story also helps provide a model for us to respond to the very challenging gospel we hear this Sunday.
Jesus says some things this week that are difficult to absorb, and even more difficult to follow. Jesus says to a large crowd, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Rather than preach his normal message of love and service, Jesus tells us to hate our family and even our own life. What could he possibly mean by this? Jesus goes even farther saying, “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” These challenges seem so unreachable and unrealistic to us. But I think we can look to Mother Teresa to help decipher this paradox.
When she felt called to it, Mother Teresa was not afraid to leave the life and friends she knew behind to start her religious life. Did you know that after leaving home to join the Sisters of Loreto, Mother Teresa never saw her family again? I’m sure that Mother Teresa didn’t hate her sister and her mother. But she loved God more than she loved her family, and so was willing to leave them behind to follow Jesus. I think that is exactly what Christ is challenging us to do in this week’s gospel. Hopefully, none of us will be asked by God to leave our family behind. But maybe we will. And if we were, would we trust God and love him enough to do it, as Teresa did?
What then about “renouncing all of our possessions”? Does this mean that we can’t live in a nice house or drive a nice car and still follow Christ? I don’t believe it does. But I do think it means that any material possession has to be unimportant enough to us that it always comes last behind our relationships, our morality, and certainly our faith. Possessions themselves are not a bad thing, but if the desire to have and keep those possessions gets in the way of our serving others, of doing the right thing, of spending time with our family, or of trying to follow Jesus better, then there is a problem there. Mother Teresa left her comfortable life as a teacher to beg for her own food and care for other people. She did it because her love of God and her love of others was so much stronger than her love of her possessions- even the roof over her head and food in her belly.
This Sunday’s gospel is certainly a challenging one. But I think that when we look at Mother Teresa’s example, we can see that when Jesus asks us to hate our family and our possessions, he is really telling us that in order to truly know Him and His plan for us, nothing can be more important to us than Him. This Sunday may be a great opportunity to evaluate our own priorities. What is most important to me? What motivates my work and other actions? Perhaps some things have become too important to you, and now is a great time to try to make Jesus first in your life.