Mother Teresa and her relationship to Blessed Mother

(Blessed Mother Parade Talk May 17, 2007 3PM at Mater Dolorosa Catholic Church)

Here is a no-brainer question. How many of us would like to get closer to Jesus? Well, duh, everyone, right? So let's do a survey. Tell me some of the ways you get closer to Jesus. (Bible, prayer, novenas, Rosary, Mass, Adoration.) All these are ways to get closer to Jesus. Do you want to know an excellent way to get closer to Jesus? Someone say, Amen, Father!

Many of you watch TV infomercials. The one that I really watch is those infomercials with weight loss program or fitness program. Many of you seen things like Gazelle, Total Gym, and Ab-Master. But in order convince you they need experts to tell you that these things work. That's why you'll see Cristy Brinkley and Chuck Norris trying to seel Total Gym. So I'm going to introduce you to a celebrity who is an expert at getting closer to Jesus. That celebrity is Mother Teresa.

Before she became Mother Teresa, Sr. Teresa was with the Congregation of Loreto Sisters for 25 years. Before she left that order, she was a quiet, unassuming and ordinary sister. Her fellow sisters never would have imagined that Sr. Teresa could start an order of her own. Then she received a vision from Our Lord regarding her mission.


In one vision, Mother Teresa saw a crowd of the poor, those who were poor materially and spiritually. She could make out the great sorrow and suffering in their faces. Our Lady was there in the midst of them, and Mother Teresa was kneeling at her side. Mother Teresa was turned toward the suffering children and so could not see Our Lady’s face, but she heard her say: “Take care of them—they are mine.—Bring them to Jesus—carry Jesus to them.—Fear not. Teach them to say the Rosary—the family Rosary and all will be well.—Fear not—Jesus and I will be with you and your children.”

In another vision Mother Teresa was shown the same crowd yet again. This time they were covered in darkness. There, in the midst of an anguished crowd that seemed unaware of his presence, was Jesus on the Cross. Our Lady was before him “at a little distance.” Mother Teresa saw herself there as well, not as an adult but “as a little child” standing directly in front of Our Lady as they both faced the Cross. Our Lady’s left hand was on Mother Teresa’s left shoulder, supporting her, and her right hand was holding Mother Teresa’s right arm, outstretched toward the crucified Jesus. Jesus then said to her: I have asked you. They have asked you, and she, My Mother, has asked you. Will you refuse to do this for me—to take care of them, to bring them to me?

Mother Teresa explains her vision in the following way:
”If Our Lady had not been there with me that day, I never would have known what Jesus meant when he said, ‘ I thirst…’””Just think God is thirsting—and you and I come forward to satiate His Thirst. Just think of that! So the better we understand, the better we will satiate His Thirst for love of souls. Pray in a special way to Our Lady to explain this to us.”

Because Blessed Mother has been so instrumental in teaching Mother Teresa how to get closer to Jesus, Mother Teresa taught her sisters to depend on Blessed Mother. She said, “That the Society may more easily attain its end, let each Sister choose the Immaculate Queen of Heaven for her Mother. She must not only love and venerate Her, but fly to Her with child like Confidence in all her joys and sorrows.We must imitate her virtues and abandon ourselves completely into her hands.With Mary, we make more progress in the love of Jesus in one month than we make in years while living less united to this good Mother (de Montfort).”

For Mother Teresa, Our Lady was a concrete, daily presence to be met with, welcomed, known, cherished, and learned from. Mother Teresa taught her followers not only to pray to Our Lady, but to live in company with her. Living with Mary implies an ongoing, daily encounter with her unseen but powerful presence. This requires not only faith on our part, but also the willingness to invest the time to draw near to her.
If we want to understand Mother Teresa, to imitate her, and to follow in her footsteps on the path to holiness, intimacy with Our Lady is not something peripheral or secondary. As Mother Teresa herself experienced, Our Lady will begin to arrange the events and details of our life as soon as we give her permission. Our life then increasingly becomes an adventure of grace as she takes the reins of our existence and begins to exercise her spiritual maternity.
Mother Teresa taught her Sisters and co-workers that Our Lady’s was a presence that helps us to see through the darkness, a presence that consoles and sustains us when we are weak, a presence that reminds us of the cry of her Son when we are forgetting him or following the voice of ego.

We need to give to Our Lady, repeatedly through the day and over the course of the years, our worries, doubts, pains, problems, and all self-reference. This is the key, the last step that will bring full relationship with her and allow her fully to intervene in our lives, to act on our behalf as she did for Mother Teresa, and for many other hidden ones whom history will never know. Without this commitment, without the gift of our willing permission, Mary is not free to act. But once we take even the first steps to entrust ourselves to her, Our Lady begins to enter our lives in a perceptible way. Her goal is to fashion our soul after the pattern of God first established in her own, to see us transformed into a living temple of the Lord, an Ark of the Covenant, that we might carry Christ to the world. This is who Our Lady was. This is who Mother Teresa was. This is who we can be, with her help.