Reading Mother Teresa--Beginnings

1935 Wall Street Journal

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, 

that we may sing for joy 

and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:14

According to the Wall Street Journal of May 25, 1931, Treasury Secretary Mellon advised that the Hoover Administration was saying no to a tax increase, which was not to say, he asserted, that some kind of increase was definitely and finally off the table. Should they determine to hike taxes, the Treasury Department, he said, would seek broadening the tax base rather than simply raising rates. After all, only 2.5 million individuals out of a 120 million population pay income taxes, and 380,000 of those pay about 97 percent.

On May 25, 1931, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Investment Bankers Association of America listened to proposals designed to safeguard US investors when obtaining foreign securities because present conditions for such investments were bound to prolong economic depression.

On May 25, 1931, an editorial in the WSJ noted misleading coverage of the Supreme Court reversing a decision in the case of Yetta Stromberg, who’d been convicted under California’s “Red Flag” law for displaying a “red flag, banner, badge, or device of any color . . . as a sign of . . . opposition to organized government.” The court, the editorial argued, had left in place provisions against anarchy and sedition.

The Wall Street Journal of May 25, 1931, contains no mention of a young lady in India, Sister Teresa, making the first profession of her vows after two years of her novitiate training, vows that promised a life of “poverty, charity, and obedience.

“If you could know how happy I am, as Jesus’ little spouse,” she wrote a friend. “No one, not even those who are enjoying some happiness which in the world seems perfect, could I envy, because I am enjoying my complete happiness, even when I suffer something for my beloved Spouse."

I rather doubt her first profession was noted anywhere in the English-speaking world. Why should it have been?

Nothing the Wall Street Journal said that day was minuscule or incidental. Significant events were occurring, the country smack-dab in the middle of something people only later would call “The Great Depression.” I’m sure the Journal newsroom buzzed that day, breathed a collective sigh of relief once the first edition was out.

But on the other side of the world a young woman was taking her vows before God, vows that would lead to a lifelong profession of faith witnessed by most of the world.

Other than a few who witnessed the event, no one wrote up her story. Few cared.

Somehow, that it wasn’t a headline-maker seems a great blessing.