On her first visit to Australia in more than 50 years, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity has recalled her earliest encounters with the order’s founder, St Teresa of Kolkata. Source: Catholic Voice.
It was not a sermon, a grand gesture or even a conversation that first stopped Sr Mary Joseph in her tracks. It was the way St Teresa made the Sign of the Cross.
More than five decades after meeting St Teresa as a 19-year-old, the leader of the Missionaries of Charity still traces much of her vocation to those early encounters – and to a lesson about seeing God in the person directly in front of you.
“I was so struck because I used to make it without thinking what I was doing,” Sr Joseph said.
“In her action, even as a young sister, I felt there was so much faith, faith in the invisible reality we call God. For me, he was an idea, he was not a person. For Mother, he was a person with whom she lived, she moved.”
Speaking with Archbishop Christopher Prowse during a visit to the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese, Sr Joseph recalled St Teresa’s willingness to undertake the most ordinary work alongside the sisters.
“Mother was so down to earth. She could pick up a broom and sweep the house,” she says.
For the young Sr Joseph, watching St Teresa personally care for poor and sick people challenged her understanding of faith.
“I used to wonder, this is a European sister coming to India, touching the feet of the poor.
“Perhaps the reason I’m still here is because of that memory.”
Returning to Australia after 52 years, Sr Joseph sees a country that has changed.
“I see Australia has become much more secular,” she says. “And it’s a pain for me because these were my first years of religious life and I loved Australia because the people were so warm, especially in Melbourne.”
Yet Sr Joseph sees hope in a continuing spiritual hunger.
“There is a thirst for God in Australia that cannot be quenched by material things,” she says. “Only God can fill up that emptiness in us.”
Her final prayer is that Australians “may never forget God” and “may rediscover their humanity by discovering God”.
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The lesson Mother Teresa taught without saying a word (By Jeanine Doyle, Catholic Voice)
