Mother Teresa: A Biography (7 page)

4 5

who came to visit her. Seeing her in her sari, some burst into tears. But all were glad to see her and to offer what help they could.

Many years later, Michael Gomes recounted some of his experiences helping Mother Teresa. On one rainy afternoon, Mother Teresa and Mable Gomes returned from the slums. Both were soaking wet, and Mother Teresa apologized for Mable’s condition. She told Michael that they had just come from a home where they found a woman standing in a room without a roof. Knee-deep in water, the woman had held an enamel washbasin over the head of her sick child to protect him from the rain.

The landlord had broken the roof deliberately because the woman had been unable to pay her rent for the last two months, owing him a total of eight rupees. Later that afternoon, Mother Teresa hurried back to give the woman her rent money.

On another occasion, when Michael accompanied Mother Teresa on one of her begging forays, they again encountered rainy weather. Watching from the train window, they saw a man, completely drenched, slumped under a tree. The two hurried to finish collecting medicines and went back with the hopes of helping the man. However, when they reached him, he was already dead. As Gomes later recounted, Mother Teresa was in anguish over the incident, and the fact that many other poor and gravely ill men and women, like the unknown man, might have wanted to say something to someone, to have some comfort in their final hours. The incident hardened her resolve to search for a facility where the terminally ill could die in dignity and peace.

Gomes also remembered giving Mother Teresa extra food whenever there was any to spare. Often she would ask him for extra mugs of rice, which she gave away to starving families. Still, from time to time, she encountered hostility. Gomes remembered when a group of passengers on a train, remarking on her strange nun’s habit, said that she was nothing more than a Christian hoping to convert Hindus. For a long time, Mother Teresa listened in silence. Finally she turned to them and said, “Ami Bharater Bharat Amar” (I am Indian and India is mine).6 The passenger car was silent for the rest of the trip.

“IT WILL BE A HARD LIFE”

On March 19, 1949, the feast day of St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus and the protector of the Virgin Mary, a young girl appeared at 14 Creek Lane. Subashni Das had been a boarder at St. Mary’s at Entally since she was a small girl, and had been one of Mother Teresa’s students. She was now in the last year of secondary school. She had come to join Mother 4 6

M O T H E R T E R E S A

Teresa in her work. Mother Teresa remarked, “It will be a hard life. Are you prepared for it?”7 The young woman said yes, and in doing so became Mother Teresa’s first postulant, taking the name of Agnes, Mother Teresa’s Christian name. She would, in time, become Mother Teresa’s closest aide: she replaced Mother Teresa as the mistress of novices, the nun who oversees the training of new nuns, and took over the duties of the mother superior when Mother Teresa began traveling.

Some weeks later, another former student Magdalena Gomes also came to the house. She, too, wished to join Mother Teresa in helping the poor.

She took the name of Sister Gertrude and became the order’s first doctor.

By Easter of that year, the three women were sharing the tiny quarters at the Gomes’s home and traveling everyday to Motijihl. They lived as nuns, though the Church had not yet recognized them as a formal religious order.

Soon, two more women arrived to join them. By the beginning of summer, there were 10 young women, all former students of Mother Teresa, living at the Gomes’s home. Since none had graduated from school, Mother Teresa made sure that they completed their studies and that they all passed their final exams. Of the original 10, only 2 eventually left. The others went on to become some of the first novitiates of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

To make room for the new arrivals, the Gomes’s opened the upper room, which was really more like a large loft. The group used one area of the room as a chapel. Father Henry donated a wood altar and candle-sticks. Above the altar was the picture of the Virgin Mother that Father Van Exem had given to Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa instituted a schedule for the young women. Each morning, they were awakened by a bell, which also summoned them to meals.

The same bell also signaled periods of prayer, rest, and work. Every morning, clad in their saris, the young women and Mother Teresa left for the poorest areas of Calcutta. The days followed a set routine: mornings were spent teaching school, while afternoons were given to the sick and dying.

By this time, there were two schools to tend to: the first one in Motijihl and another in the slum of Tiljala, where Mother Teresa rented another small room for her new students.

The young women and Mother Teresa also established a dispensary, which was located in a classroom in the local parish school. After school hours, the large room was turned into a screening room for tuberculosis patients. The classroom, which opened onto a veranda, was often the scene of long lines of people waiting to be examined. The nuns tried to get the most seriously ill into city hospitals. However, when necessary, they O U T O F A C E S S P O O L — H O P E

4 7

cared for the sick on the spot as they lay in the streets and alleys of the city.

Mother Teresa worried about her charges. Remembering the advice of the sisters at Patna, she was especially concerned that they were getting enough to eat. Michael Gomes remembers one instance in which Mother Teresa, sitting in the back of a truck with some bags of rice and flour, returned at the end of the day from one of her begging expeditions. She had not eaten all day nor gotten any water for fear that someone would steal the food meant for her postulants. She went without in order that the food would be delivered safely to the house.

To help the sisters, Father Van Exem and Father Henry made an announcement at Sunday mass calling for
mushti bhikka,
a Bengali custom where any families that were able put aside a handful of rice for a beggar.

This effort marked the start of the feeding program that the Missionaries of Charity oversaw and that would in time include not only food, but clothing and soap for the poor.

A YEAR’S END

And then the first year was over. On August 16, 1949, Mother Teresa’s year of exclaustration came to an end. Now Archbishop Périer had to decide whether she would remain outside the cloister of Loreto or return. By this time, the archbishop had received reports of Mother Teresa and her growing band of young women. In his mind, there was no turning back for Mother Teresa; she would remain outside of the cloister. If she had returned, the young women would have disbanded. They were not recognized as a formal order of nuns; they were simply a group of very religious women who happened to be living with a rather unorthodox nun. A course that would allow Mother Teresa to continue her work with her as-sistants would be to accept them as a congregation for the diocese of Calcutta answerable to the archbishop just as Mother Teresa was. This was a real possibility since the little group now numbered more than 10, the required number needed to begin a new congregation.

Still, the archbishop remained cautious. Before making any decision, he needed to know if there had been any negative reports about Mother Teresa and her work. He went to Father Van Exem, who admitted that there had been one report, that of an old Jesuit who believed Mother Teresa was doing the work of the devil. He had gone to the mother superior at Loreto, asking her why a woman who was doing such a fine job as a teacher in an established school would leave to wander about the slums of Calcutta. The archbishop, so incensed by the comments, insisted that the 4 8

M O T H E R T E R E S A

priest in question immediately apologize to the superior for his criticism of Mother Teresa and her work.

While Mother Teresa awaited the archbishop’s decision, she took another very important step: she applied for and was granted Indian citizenship. The act was a potent one, signifying not only her break with her European roots, but a pledge to become one with the people she served.

By the end of 1949, the archbishop had become so supportive of Mother Teresa and her efforts that he stated his willingness to recognize her group as a congregation in his archdiocese. The final approval would have to come from Rome, but the archbishop was willing to make the journey himself and plead Mother Teresa’s case on her behalf. He planned to go to Rome in April 1950 to present the Vatican with the necessary documents.

Now Mother Teresa struggled with a draft of the proposed order’s constitution, which outlined the rules by which the nuns would live. She wrote of her spiritual calling on the train ride to Darjeeling and outlined the first three vows all would take when coming into the order: poverty, chastity, and obedience. To these she added a fourth vow: “to give whole-hearted and free service to the poorest of the poor,”8 which would become known as “our way.”9 She also decided on a name for the new order: the Missionaries of Charity.

She turned over her draft to Father Van Exem, who worked on it, tight-ening up the language, as Mother Teresa’s grasp of English was not good.

Father Van Exem forwarded the document to a priest who specialized in canon, or church, law. Then five copies were made and taken to the archbishop who presented the documents to Cardinal Pietro Fumosoni-Biondi, head of the Office for the Propagation of the Faith for the Catholic Church. The Vatican accepted the constitution, even with the fourth vow, which over time brought many to the order and quieted even the most skeptical. On October 7, 1950, the church had a new congregation in its fold: the Missionaries of Charity, headed by Mother Teresa.

DRAWING ON THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE

The new constitution of the Missionaries of Charity may have been polished by the priests of the church, but the document reflected the spirit of Mother Teresa. In it, she not only outlined why she believed what she was doing was so important and the specific vows for her new order, but also some basic rules that the Missionaries of Charity continue to follow today. She began by stating the goal of the order: Our aim is to quench the infinite thirst of Jesus Christ for love by the profession of the evangelical counsels and by whole-O U T O F A C E S S P O O L — H O P E

4 9

hearted free service to the poorest of the poor, according to the teaching and the life of our Lord in the gospel, revealing in a unique way the salvation of God. . . . Our particular mission is to labor at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the poor. . . . We are called THE MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY.10

Mother Teresa wished to see the vow of poverty rigorously applied. She wrote:

Whoever the poorest of the poor are, they are Christ for us—

Christ under the guise of humans suffering. . . . Our food, our dress; it must be just like the poor. The poor are Christ himself.

We should not serve the poor like they
were
Jesus. We should serve the poor because they
are
Jesus.11

Mother Teresa sought to reinforce the vow of poverty in other ways, too. In the constitution of the order it is stipulated that at no time will the Missionaries of Charity own any buildings or other property. Postulants were to be members of the Roman Catholic Church, which would pre-serve the very core of the congregation. However, in time it became clear that because the church was not a strong institution in India, that this stipulation would have to be modified. Still, the core tenets of the constitution for the new congregation showed the influence of those groups that had the greatest impact on Mother Teresa’s own life, from the missionary efforts of the Jesuits who swore devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and obedience to God, and also to the Loreto Sisters who stressed a similar devotion and obedience to carrying out the work of the Lord on earth.

The last matter that needed to be attended to was the question of the sisters’ dress. Sent to Rome were three photographs: one depicting a postulant in a plain white sari and short-sleeved habit, the second of a novice in a white sari and habit with sleeves that entirely covered the arm, and last a picture of Mother Teresa in the sisters’ dress of white sari with the distinctive blue border. The new style of dress, while unorthodox, was accepted.

A NEW BEGINNING

On October 7, 1950, Archbishop Périer came to the house at 14 Creek Lane for the first time to celebrate mass at the altar located in the tiny chapel on the second floor. A large number of persons assembled to hear Father Van Exem read the decree of erection recognizing the Missionaries 5 0

M O T H E R T E R E S A

of Charity as a new congregation limited to the diocese of Calcutta. That same day, 11 young women began their lives as postulates of the new order. It was a joyous occasion for all.

Over the next two years, 29 young women joined Mother Teresa. All took up residency on the second floor of the Gomes’s house, which res-onated with their activity. Mother Teresa wrote in her journal of the trust, surrender, and cheerfulness of the newcomers. She observed with special pride how dutifully they accepted the vow of poverty required of them.

It was not an easy life. The novices washed their clothes and their bodies using communal buckets. They cleaned their teeth with ashes and slept on thin pallets. Their meager pile of garments consisted only of their cotton saris, coarse underwear, a pair of sandals, a crucifix pinned to the left shoulder, a rosary, and an umbrella to protect them from the monsoon rains. All these items were packed in a small bundle (
potla
), which they used as a pillow.

To celebrate the completion of the new nun’s postulancy, or taking of vows, Father Van Exem created a special ceremony. The novices came to the cathedral dressed as Bengali brides. During the service, they went to a room where Mother Teresa cut their hair. This practice represented a tremendous sacrifice, as many Bengali girls regarded their long hair as a great gift. The women’s hair was often so long that the entire process took several hours to complete. They then reappeared in their religious habits as novices. It was a beautiful ceremony and one that Mother Teresa completely approved for its incorporation of high church ritual with the local culture. Father Van Exem remembered with some amusement the reaction of the locals to the first ceremonies of this kind: “The ordination of a priest takes two hours, the consecration of a bishop three hours, the reception of a Missionary of Charity four hours!”12 Not everyone, however, was pleased at the spectacle of young Bengal brides who were in fact not really married but had entered into the Catholic Church.