Mother Teresa

The month of October,2003 is a very significant month for all of us, especially to the Indian Catholics. On Oct.19, Mother Teresa will be beatified .Preparations for the beatification are in full swing and on that day all the Catholic faithful all over the world will express their unbounded joy at the beatification of a person many of them came to know and love personally.

Many of us have personal memories of her , seeing her in person or working with her as volunteers in the so many convents and houses she has established all over the world. She has shown to the world what Christian love means in reality. She was able to see beauty in the ugliest of human forms. Carrying the mission of Jesus to the hearts and hearths of millions of people she exemplified in her life what it means to follow Christ.

I remember very vividly her visit to St.Matthew's Cathedral along with Archbishop Hickey on her way to the White House to meet President Reagan. It was her visit to the United States and she also established during that visit a house of her Congregation in one of the poorest areas of D.C. In an abandoned rectory in a black neighborhood , she started her convent. Although the people were asking for jobs and not very much enthusiastic of religious houses for prayer, as the time of the blessing of the house drew near , they overcame their objections and went out of the way to help the sisters and make the place ready for her visit.As the Mother was praying inside the Cathedral, a big crowd of Spanish Catholics stood on the steps of the Cathedral , singing hymns. She went around the Cathedral, looking at its beautiful statues and windows.She also was happy to see the marble altar of the Cathedral that was a gift from the Archdiocese of Agra.I was really fortunate that I could spend some time with her and talk to her. I had gone in 1970 to the Convent of Mother Teresa in Calcutta to see her along with some priest friends of mine. At that time , she was no there. I was happy that what I could not do in Calcutta that I could do in Washington D.C.

The month of Oct.2003 is also significant on another level. This will be culminating month for the celebration of the Year of the Rosary proclaimed by the Holy Father in his apostolic letter, “The Rosary of the Virgin Mary” on Oct.16,2002. As all of us know, the Syro-Malabar Catholics of Kerala are very much attached to the rosary. There was not a Catholic home in Kerala in the past that had not been in the habit of reciting the rosary when the Angelus bells rang from the churches. Those who lived in the villages and towns of Kerala would remember how the prayers would rise in unison from all houses exactly at the same time. Recitation of the Rosary was the expression of the vibrant faith of the Catholics of Kerala. It was the devotion of rosary as well as the participation in the Eucharist that kept our faith intact and whole.Fr.Paton, the apostle of the Rosary devotion once remarked about the attachment of the Catholics of Kerala to the recitation of the rosary in one of his comments to the priests at St.Matthew's Cathedral, D.C.

As we conclude the Year of the Rosary, it is appropriate for us to revivify in us our devotion for and attachment to the Bl. Virgin Mary who is our gateway to Jesus as well as our great intercessor with Him. What she did for the hapless family at their wedding at Cana, she is doing everyday for all of us. Instead of the words, “They have no wine”, she is using other words to intercede for all of us, mentioning to the Lord every need of ours. As the Protestant historian-theologian Jaroslav Pelikan has said: “The Virgin Mary has been more of an inspiration to more people than any other woman who ever lived.”

The words of William Wordsworth in the poem "The Virgin" in his Eccelisiastical Sonnets are worth remembering because of their poetic beauty.

"Mother!whose virgin bosom was uncrost

With the least shade of thought to sin allied;

Woman!above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature's solitary boast.

What better way is there than to conclude our praise of the Virgin Mary by using the following words of the French poet, Charles Peguy:

There is something missing in all creatures…

Those that are carnal are in want of pureness

This we know .

But those that are pure are in want of being carnal.

But in her nothing is lacking…

And it is for this she is not only a unique woman among all women.

She is a unique creature among all creatures.

She comes literally first after God. After the Creator.

She is next.”