We pay tribute this week to St Teresa of Culcutta

The cold snap over the last couple of days reminded us of how mild our winter has been this year!

We had an assembly where we profiled the canonization of Mother Teresa, and the following is a couple of tributes in her memory and acknowledging the fact that in less than 20 years after her passing, she was canonized.

I want to acknowledge the work of Vincent Lucas, Sanjay Phal and Hamish Sanders who delivered this tribute at assembly.

Mother Teresa

Love it or leave it. I’m not sure if any of you here are fans of the NFL, but there has been a controversy of late surrounding Colin Kaepernick. He refused to stand during America’s National anthem in protest of police brutality against blacks. The controversy stems from the mentality of Americans that if you don’t love ‘the greatest country in the world’, leave. It is evident that there is a lot wrong and suffering in the world and if we truly loved it we wouldn’t watch idly. It is not a matter of ‘love it or leave it’ but rather ‘love it so change it’.

Earlier this week the canonization of Mother Teresa took place, she is now known as St Teresa of Calcutta. As St Teresa died before many of us were born a lot of us probably know little about one of the most influential people of modern time.

Her story began when she was just 17 entering the Loreto nuns in Dublin, Ireland, this led to her being sent by the Loreto order to Calcutta in India. It was there in Calcutta where Mother Teresa saw great suffering and poverty many of the people faced each day, she began to take great pity on those who were consumed by the unforgiving slums. These people were known as the untouchables, India’s lowest of the low, no one would want to offer support or have any association with them in fear of been labelled as one. Being a person of endless love Mother Teresa would always give what little food she had, but more importantly spend time with these outcasts. She said “the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved”. She began to grow on this idea that the poorest and most vulnerable must be shown the most love. Mother Teresa did what many of us avoid, she loved so she changed.

St Teresa of Calcutta established the ‘milestones of charity’ where she sacrificed her life to serve those on the outskirts of society. Her small selfless acts grew to form the missionaries of charity and today they are established in over 100 countries continuing to offer hope through their acts of self-sacrifice. She set up schools and hospitals and like her we are called to make a change.

Go out there and do good.

Go out there and serve.

Your small actions can have a profound impact.

So if we all start doing small selfless acts we can come together as a community and make a huge difference.

Love it, so change it.

I shared the following reflection…

As Hamish said, Mother Teresa had a positive effect on people in general, not just the thousands of sick people that she and her fellow nuns attended to for many years.

Mother Teresa also had a profound effect on famous people. One was Princess Diana, also coincidentally died in tragic circumstances a week prior to Mother Teresa’s passing. In the year they died, 1997, Diana, who used her wealth and influence for a number of causes, met and prayed with Mother Teresa in New York.

Another was Steven Waugh who captained the Australian Cricket side in the 1990s and early 2000s. Australian cricket captains are like All Black captains – held in high regard. Waugh was also a tough, combative cricketer in the Australian mould, a master of the sledge, which he termed ‘mental disintegration’.

By his own admission he was not religious at all. However, his meeting with Mother Teresa recalibrated his life. While on tour in India in 1996, and while in Calcutta (now Kolkata), where Mother Teresa worked, Waugh caught a rickshaw from the team hotel to the Mother House, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, which she had founded in 1950 to look after the many poor people in that city – the homeless, the starving, the dying.

As Waugh said, “I arrived at about 6am and witnessed a Mass with all the nuns there.” “The nuns were sitting on the floor and there were all these wooden shutters and shafts of light coming through the windows…then, all of a sudden, there was a commotion around me and Mother Teresa appeared out of nowhere and was right in front of me.”

The famous cricketer and elderly nun had a quick chat, nothing too deep – he asked her about her work and she about his cricket – and then she was on her way. “But it was really great to meet her and to be in her presence, and she certainly had an aura about her”.

Waugh continued, “from that moment on I thought if I ever get the opportunity I should do something that in some small way emulates her work.”

A year or so after he met Mother Teresa Waugh was again on tour in India, and one of the tests was in Kolkata. Australia lost the Test match in four days, meaning he had a day to spare. A note was slipped under the door of his hotel room inviting him to visit Udayan, a leprosy centre for kids. He jumped at the chance.

When he arrived, he says, “I thought, this is a great place, these kids are happy, healthy and content — but I wanted to know where they came from and their background, just to compare it, so I said, 'Can you please take me to a leprosy colony so I can see where they come from?’ and they were pretty shocked that I wanted to do it, but I went in there and saw it and was really appalled by their living conditions.”

This is the leper colony where an Indian girl called Roshina had lived for 12 years with her mother. Her parents were both lepers who begged for survival on the streets. They were forced to give up Roshina when she was five.

Waugh, who had just had a baby daughter, had noticed something at The leper colony, called Udayan: there were no girls. When he asked why he was told that the boys would grow up to be the breadwinners, so they took in only boys.

“I said, ‘What do the girls do in the leper colony?’ They said, ‘By the time they’re seven or eight they have to sell themselves to support their family.’  That was a lightbulb moment — I just couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear that, particularly with my own daughter. I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to do something for the girls,’ so we started raising money for a girls’ wing at Udayan and 18 years later we’re still there.”

Waugh’s foundation has raised and donated more than $10 million to charities in Australia and India. It donates about $75,000 a year to Udayan and it built the girls’ dormitory where Roshina has slept for the past 12 years.

What would have happened to Roshina had she not been accepted into Udayan, I asked her mother. “She would not have been educated, she’d have begged with us. We’d have married her off young to whoever came along.”

Mother Teresa, while small in stature was powerful in will and was a lady who fought tooth and nail for the disadvantaged of Calcutta, because they need it most.

Mother Teresa described the poor ones in the world as being like the suffering Christ.

Her maxim in life was – If we pray we believe.

If we believe we love.

If we love we serve.

Mother Teresa was canonised last Sunday.

As well, in promoting the ‘CanTeen Run for a Life’, Jack Dixon honoured his father who passed away this year after suffering cancer. Needless to say it was a most moving address which took outstanding courage to deliver!

Until next week

Justin Boyle