NO HUMANITARIAN Mother Teresa bristled when people called her a social worker She had good reason
Poplin, Mary
NO HUHANITARIAN A portrait of Mother Teresa Nary Poplin Last year I spent two months as a volunteer at one of the homes for children operated by the Mis-sionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Like...
...As the Scriptures promise, the sisters believe that the more you give, the more is given to you...
...Mother kept pointing to the crucifix...
...For example, the Missionaries do not question those who come to them for help...
...You fall more in love with Jesus everyday," Mother Teresa told me one day, shaking her finger and looking me right in the eye...
...They do not commute to the communities in which they work and return to middle-class lives in the evenings...
...They immediately were confronted with a young handicapped girl who had considerable lung congestion...
...But when asked why she didn't become more involved in the politics of poverty and world hunger, she replied, "that was not my calling, God calls others to this task...
...She looked at me, at first quizzically, and then nodded in recognition...
...There's the day when there was no food and miraculously the schools in Calcutta were closed and all the bread destined for the schools was delivered to the Missionaries...
...Even illness is often interpreted as a way of coming closer to God, as a way of God revealing himself more clearly, and as an opportunity to discern problems in one's own character more profoundly...
...Someone should donate a washing machine for all these diapers and clothes," I said...
...I said, "Yes, Ma'am...
...It is that love, as Mother Teresa showed us, whose work produces not tiredness but energy...
...Rarely do any of us consider how suffering might be a gift from God, to call us to become more holy...
...I don't want to present Mother Teresa or the Missionaries as perfect...
...Needless to say, this is contrary to all secular political reasoning...
...Most of of us are drawn to serve the poor out of empathy or pity...
...While we often say that crisis and suffering builds character, we avoid both whenever we can, and expend much effort creating techniques to compensate for, minimize, or overcome the suffering...
...Each of them has a prayer book and song Things are very different for the Missionaries...
...Indeed, she never solicited money...
...She had often seen me sitting near her during Mass and adoration, and we had bowed to one another during the kiss of peace...
...Like many West-ern visitors, I initially found the experience disorienting...
...rather, she was godly...
...Mother Teresa was in the world but she truly was not of the world...
...The Missionaries of Charity see Jesus in everyone they meet...
...Rather than respond to criticism about a lack of medical equipment, however, the sisters simply and quietly did their work...
...We Americans are rarely encouraged to take responsibility for our own suffering...
...Sometimes we even had healthy babies whose parents were ill or in crisis...
...They quite literally see Christ in everyone, and especially in the "poorest of the poor...
...Indeed, the sisters' instinctive response was to thank God for one of his many miracles while the European bearers of the miracle became increasingly frustrated by the seeming obliviousness of the nuns...
...On Christopher Hitchens's widely publicized book on Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position (Verso), he criticizes her for accepting money and awards from those he considers criminals...
...Things are very different for the Missionaries of Charity...
...Mother Teresa was often depicted in the media, especially upon her recent death, as a great hu-manist, a superior social worker...
...The intent of their community is to treat each human being as they would Christ and to do each task they perform for the benefit of the poor as they would do it for Christ...
...We must each stay faithful to our own call, be faithful to the things God calls each of us to do and do them with holiness...
...Telephones are one of the few exceptions to this rule...
...There's the time when answered prayers brought about a cease-fire in Beirut, allowing the sisters to rescue some handicapped children...
...They know the demands of poverty in a way most of us as social workers do not-the time it takes to hand wash clothes on the concrete, to collect water from the spigot, to shop each day for food, to cook over coals, to walk or use poor public transportation...
...Yet regardless of the situation, each of us, at the very least, has choices to make about how we respond to suffering...
...To the best of my knowledge she got medical attention (not necessarily the best) primarily when she was unconscious and unable to protest...
...She looked at me as though I hadn't understood, then gently and confidently instructed me, "Oh, it is not I who forgives, it is God, it is God...
...One of the inventors of the latest pacemaker wanted to donate one to Mother as well as the medical services to replace her old one...
...We spend a great deal of time in our lives trying to ease and avoid suffering, and when it comes, we do not know what to do with it...
...It is not a love where we expect something in return...
...The children in the order's homes are also taken to the hospital when needed...
...Informed that the home did not have such equipment, the volunteers began to protest...
...I left believing that I had witnessed the Scriptures being lived in a way that I found both humbling and challenging...
...The sisters do get cross with one another and other people...
...If you stick to just the "facts" about Mother Teresa, you can never fully describe her...
...She was telling me, you cannot do faith in your head...
...These indirect, abstract, and bureaucratic forms of assistance distance the server from the served...
...In fact, much of our secular literature suggests that Mother Teresa and the Missionaries are psychologically flawed in their acceptance of pain and suffering...
...Washing diapers was never quite the same for me again...
...Where, they wondered, was the respiratory therapy machine...
...I began to see the reactions of the sisters and of the Western volunteers as parallel conversations conducted between people who live in the same space and time but in some important sense not in the same world...
...It is a call for us to become more holy," one said...
...In this humanistic equation, pride is an ever present temptation...
...Each of them has three saris, one for special occasions, and two which are alternated...
...Many stories of divine providence are told by the Missionaries...
...Jesus helps us wash, love helps us...
...As one sister who worked closely with Mother explained to me, "the Missionaries are always happy to accept individual donations as the expression of divine providence...
...During my stay I had an opportunity to talk to Mother Teresa about Hitchens's book...
...They wanted to know what was God's message to them...
...Neither Mother Teresa nor the Missionaries of Charity allows others to raise money in our name...
...book with covers made out of what appears to be brown paper bags-the books' pages typed on old manual typewriters-a Bible, a cup and dish, a pillow, pillow case and two sheets, a rosary, and a crucifix pin which holds the sari securely...
...Give thanks to him...
...much faster, I fear, than did the volunteers from their annoyance over the primitive medical conditions in which they had to work...
...It is not tough love...
...Having worked alongside them, I think nothing could be further from the truth...
...Mother Teresa served the poor not because they needed her but because God called her to the work...
...They do not want to be tempted to do things in order to obtain or manage money and thus be drawn away from their primary call "to serve the poorest of the poor with free, whole-hearted service...
...We had spoken directly to one another very little...
...The Missionaries put real love into the daily tasks of cooking, serving and cleaning up after a meal, washing diapers, smiling at strangers, squashing their own needs and desires, answering the phone, or picking up trash that isn't theirs...
...The sisters meekly and patiently listened to the complaints of the volunteers...
...This is the same reason they do not ask for money or devote their energies to procuring the best of modern medical technology...
...It is not a love where anything goes because you are poor or because you are privileged, or where bitterness and anger or indulgence blind the server and the served...
...A person shows up with an empty pot for her family or just walks in off the street for a plate of food...
...This is the phrase that best exemplifies the work with the Missionaries of Charity, most of whom will never be known for the millions of little tasks of great love they do in the world...
...One day, for example, I was helping the sisters with the washing...
...Most shocking is the absence of hospital-like procedures and equipment...
...She often remarked that if God had told her what was to happen after she picked up the first dying person off the Calcutta street, she would never have done it, for she would have been too afraid...
...A sister immediately replied, "Oh no, we don't need a washing machine...
...They don't...
...Similarly, I have read criticism suggesting that at the end of her life Mother Teresa got the best of health care and the latest technology while the poor around her went without...
...Surely, given Mother Teresa's fame, such equipment was available...
...For example, during my stay in Calcutta, a group of European women arrived for a two-week stint as volunteers...
...Oh yes, the book...
...One healthcare professional was so distressed that she left after just a couple of days...
...Yet just as she asked no questions of the needy, Mother Teresa never considered investigating the lives of those who gave to her...
...Moreover, the Bible clearly promises that wealth ill-gotten will eventually end up with the poor (Proverbs 13 and 28...
...As the sisters' response to the seemingly fortuitous arrival of the respiratory equipment demonstrates, they literally believe that through prayer God provides all that is needed...
...They literally believe that God provides all that is needed through prayer...
...In contrast, modern welfare systems use extensive qualification criteria that frequently prevent some from getting the help they need and become a game to get around for others...
...And like those they serve, they look forward to ice cream the day after Easter and the day after Christmas...
...Most of the sick infants with whom I worked had to be left with us for an extended period to get well...
...When you see such love at work you come to realize how such an ardent love of God enables us to truly love humankind, especially "the poorest of the poor...
...God forgives...
...I myself saw a child who had struggled for months to stay alive evidently healed after a night of prayer...
...Mother Teresa called herself "a pencil in God's hand," and she meant it...
...To the Missionaries, suffering is not merely a physical experience, but a spiritual encounter, one that encourages them to learn new responses, to seek forgiveness, to turn to God, to think like Christ, and to rejoice that the suffering has produced a good work in them...
...While many of the volunteers and paid workers were disturbed by this possibility, the sisters were not...
...Prayer is their method, their technology...
...We fight it, assign blame to individuals and social systems, and try to protect ourselves...
...they characteristically remarked...
...For example, having embraced radical poverty, there is nothing material that can be used to tempt them...
...Finally, she took the woman's hands and pointed them to the cross and said, firmly, "It is not I, it is him...
...When most of us do such everyday chores, we give them little thought or care...
...As a matter of fact, whenever we hear of this being done, we take pains to stop it...
...Rather than directly serving the poor, social workers are often engaged in mounds of paperwork in efforts to monitor and police the aid, and in complying with rules and regulations that actually inhibit meeting the needs of those they seek to serve...
...Mother Teresa further insisted that the commitments to poverty, chastity, and obedience afford the Missionaries a protection from evil...
...The love the sister spoke of is not love that I am used to thinking about or acting on...
...They see themselves as simply accomplishing the work God created them to do with the grace and love he gives them to do it...
...Prayer, not medical or physical work, is the first task of the Missionaries...
...She did not know my name or what I do...
...Two different sets of assumptions and beliefs about reality are at work...
...Even less do we know how to help others who suffer...
...No one is perfect...
...At first glance many of the differences between the work of the Missionaries and that of social workers appear to stem from the fact that the sisters live the lives of the people they serve...
...It is, finally, a spur to action...
...Each sister owns no more than what will fit into a small box...
...As a consequence, the sisters manifest both incredible humility and an unshakable sense of hope...
...It is not humanistic love drawn from pride and pity, willing to sacrifice goodness for sweetness...
...Mother Teresa was firm about the source of poverty...
...Rather, they are poor in order to follow Christ, who chose to be poor, to be born in a stable, to live and die with no possessions...
...Every cell in my body knew what she meant...
...The destitute families know the sisters understand their plight...
...It is a strong and sacrificial love, the love that allows a sister to pull worms out of the flesh of another human being while being cursed for doing so...
...The Missionaries of Charity, one learns, resist owning anything, even medical equipment, that is not widely available to the poor...
...The Missionaries of Charity sisters, as is their practice concerning all gifts intended for the poor, enthusiastically consented to its use...
...Through another sister she refused politely, saying she couldn't accept special privileges not given the poor...
...They see Jesus in a twenty-year-old volunteer from New Jersey searching the Hindu temples and Buddhist ashrams of India for some sense of meaning, in an aged Muslim starved and half-eaten by rats and worms on the street, in a deformed infant just born and found in a garbage heap...
...Such attitudes are radically different from, and perhaps even at odds with, the motivations behind most social work as we know it...
...The sisters literally do not worry about the scarcity of resources, about policing their beneficiaries, and least of all about their own needs...
...I went to Calcutta in an effort to better understand the differences between the way most of us think of our social work (whether it be teaching or helping the poor or sick) and Mother Teresa's radical Christianity in action...
...All are served, for a year or even for every day of their lives...
...Indeed, those without a pot or plate are fed first...
...That is not quite the case...
...A belief that somehow needs will be met as they arise as long as the sisters are doing God's work makes their mission a direct and daily task rather than an indirect and long-term strategy like the antipoverty initiatives we in the West are familiar with...
...Many writers have depicted Mother Teresa as someone who saw the poor and responded sympathetically to their needs...
...Isn't it wonderful how God provided these volunteers just when this little girl needed them...
...The sisters eat like the poor...
...It is the love that never gets bitter, that never gives up...
...Another sister told me how a group of sisters had read the book, then gathered in prayer to discern its meaning...
...I haven't read it but some of the sisters have...
...The Missionaries look at such trials and insults as times for self-examination, to build humility and patience, to love their enemies-opportunities to become more holy...
...Thus, it is Jesus' diapers they wash, his meals being prepared, and his body being tended...
...She was obedient to God's call, not to her social conscience...
...It was God's work, the sisters assured us, he would see to it that all would be well...
...As it turned out, one of the European volunteers managed to locate a portable respiratory machine somewhere in Calcutta...
...To really comprehend what the sisters are about, however, it is important to understand that they do not embrace this hard life simply to better understand and serve the poor...
...In fact, I took with me to Calcutta offers of medical assistance for her...
...The sisters are deeply committed to living as close to the poor as possible and anyone who has been to Calcutta for any length of time comes to understand the seriousness and the benefits of this vow...
...One day during morning Mass, as I was sitting on the floor near her, an Indian woman came in and kept bowing to Mother and kissing her hand...
...Serving the poor is something we decide to do out of our own energy, guilt, or goodness...
...But she was not humanistic...
...one is washed each day while the other is worn...
...They do not think of poor parents as the enemies of poor children, as is too often done in this country...
...The parents were not afraid to admit to the sisters that they couldn't care for their children during such illnesses...
...Mother, there are people who write in books that you are one of the wealthiest women in the world, and you don't need any more money," I said...
...My conversations with the sisters about this incident revealed the enormous gulf between Mother Teresa's work and the everyday assumptions we make in the West about what it means to help the poor...
...To the Missionaries of Charity we are all both worthy and unworthy, and it is only through the grace of God that we have what we have...
...I laughed and said, "Yes, Mother, in the end of the book, he says he knew you said you forgave him and he's irate because he says he didn't ask you to forgive him and he didn't need it...
...Despite Mother Teresa's repeated reminders that the order's mission is religious, not social work, most Westerners who visit the homes for sick and handicapped children expect them to look like medical clinics or hospitals...
...A firm acceptance of divine providence sets them apart from our common assumptions about how the world works...
...Me he just called to tend the poorest of the poor...
...Elected poverty is a reparation, in part, for the materialistic sins of the world...
...The Missionaries do not judge these parents for their inability to take care of the infants...
...A firm acceptance of divine providence sets them apart from our common assumptions about how the world works...
...Mother wants people to give freely and sacrificially, being moved in their hearts by God to do so, rather than just taking part in a social fund-raiser...
...They also, I believe, distance the server from his or her own life mission...
...Because of this absolute belief that it is God who works in and through them, there is no room for pride in the sisters' work...
...They live in the poorest neighborhoods and they know their neighbors...
...she said, "God does not create poverty, we do, because we do not share...
...But you cannot understand Mother Teresa's work unless you fully understand how very differently from our everyday expectations the sisters interpret and respond to what happens in the world around them...
...they do make mistakes...
...The key to understanding the Missionaries of Charity is the sacredness with which they treat all people and the humble and prayerful manner in which all the work is done...
...This can be particularly disconcerting for people who have worked in hospital settings in America and Europe...
...The child recovered quickly...
...It matters not, he [the author] is forgiven...
...Others agreed...
...Mother Teresa often said, quoting her namesake Therese of Lisieux, that while most of us think our lives should be about doing great things, we rather are called to do small things with great love...
...I now think of her words as a message from the Holy Spirit...
...When I was in Calcutta a rumor circulated that some women were reselling the food on the street...
...It is the love that haunts us when reading Christ's instructions to his disciples, "What good is it if you love those who love you, do not even the sinners love those who love them...
Vol. 124 • December 1997 • No. 22
