Reading Mother Teresa--To Be a Saint

To the church of God in Corinth, 

to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, 

together with all those everywhere 

who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – 

their Lord and ours. . . . 1 Corinthians 1:2. 

Sometimes I envy the Roman Catholic world because they get to help the rest of us identify who is and who isn’t a saint. Protestants use the word saint almost like a metaphor – the saint who, out of nowhere, stops along a highway to help with a flat; the saint in the parking lot who picks up your wallet and sends it home, leaving every cent of the $100 you’d just withdrawn from an ATM. You know – “Gee, I swear that guy is a saint.”

Not really. But almost.

There’s no almost in the Roman Catholic tradition – well, there have been also-rans, I’m sure; but the Vatican finally judges who is and who isn’t, recognizing, even certifying sainthood. Getting into that elite club is not easy.

In September of 1946, Mother Teresa took a train to an annual spiritual retreat, and while aboard heard directly from Jesus, who spoke in no uncertain terms, telling her, not asking her, to get out of the education business altogether and bring love, in Calcutta, to the poorest of the poor. “Come be my light,” he told her.

In intervals, this conversation continued throughout the entire retreat. Jesus was calling, calling her name, calling her mission. The language was clear and forceful but memorably endearing. She told others that he spoke to her lovingly: “My own spouse” and “My own little one” (44).

The mission he called her too, however, was daunting. She claimed – and what the church certifiably recognizes – is that it was the very language voice of Jesus Christ as he spoke to Mother Teresa, not once but many times in those few days: “Come, come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come, be My light” (44).

The book I’m reading, titled Come Be My Light, chooses to print the lines Jesus spoke in italics, like this: “Come, come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come, be My light.” I’ve walked through dozens of language and grammar texts in my 40 years of teaching English, but I never encountered a punctuation rule that applies to quotes from the Lord God. I don’t know who chose to put Christ’s words into italics, but it makes sense that someone would determine that, on the page before me, his words deserve some kind of unique ornamentation.

The 1946 retreat at Darjeeling, India, determined Mother’s Teresa’s future. After all, she’d heard from Jesus. She’d listened to his voice. She had no choice but to follow.

I’m not sure how to talk about what the Roman Catholics call “interior locutions” because, the Lord knows, millions of people, over time, have heard voices they registered as emanating from God, many of them demanding bizarre things. I’m not sure how those direct quotes should be printed, but I’m willing to give the Roman Catholic authorities the freedom to believe that, in Mother Teresa’s case, the voice was so real and true and divine that we simply have to italicize.

Here’s the paradox we all live with, Roman Catholic and or Protestant: that such communication seems impossible doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Maybe Mother Teresa did hear him on the train to and all during her retreat. Maybe Jesus Christ, from his throne at the right hand of God, decided to stop by the train to speak his word to a bird-like Albanian schoolteacher in India. The Roman Catholics believe he did because, in part, they know she listened.

To Roman Catholics, Mother Teresa is a saint.

On that most all of us agree, even though our two traditions ascribe varying definitions. Maybe I’m too much a Protestant, too much the skeptic, but I think I would have avoided the italics.

Still, in my book, she is a saint.