Reading Mother Teresa--No small thing

“Where you die I will die, 

and there I will be buried. 

May the Lord deal with me, 

be it ever so severely, 

if even death separates you and me.” 

Ruth 1:17 

Hamlet – Act I, scene 1. Hamlet’s father’s ghost appears, speaks only to his son, tells him how his Uncle Claudius, now on the throne and in “the incestuous sheets” of Hamlet’s mother’s bed, murdered him, Hamlet’s own father, the former King. He then spurs on Hamlet to revenge. “Swear!” he moans, as if the fires of hell were already at his ankles. “Swear! Swear! Swear!”

On the first day we discussed the play, a student raised his hand. “They must have taken oaths really seriously in those days,” he said.

The subtext is obvious: the student figured that today, generally, people don’t. He may be right.

“Very seriously,” I told him. We didn’t talk about today.

Yesterday, in church, a young lady stood up and answered three questions and thereby underwent a liturgical ritual we call “Profession of Faith.” I listened to the questions, read them closely, far closer, I imagine, than I did when, almost 50 years ago, those same questions were read to me. Back then, I, for one, didn’t take an oath all that seriously.

That’s the measure of life experiences I bring to Sister Teresa’s oath, her “profession of perpetual vows,” on May 25, 1931, after a two years of initiation into the world she was entering, her novitiate, vows by which she promised a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Her vows, unlike mine, are much closer to those of Ruth, to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Sister Teresa’s vows were a heart-felt dedication built on generations of Roman Catholic tradition, an emphatic personal dedication, as pure as it was resolute. “Before crosses used to frighten me,” she wrote to her spiritual guide, “I used to get goose bumps at the thought of suffering – but now I embrace suffering even before it actually comes, and like this Jesus and I live in love” (20).

Yesterday, in that young lady’s home, where her profession of faith I’m sure was certainly celebrated, her mom and dad threw a great party, thrilled to the soul at what their daughter committed herself to in our public worship.

It’s altogether possible that Sister Teresa listened to voices more akin to Hamlet’s father’s demands, and it goes without saying that she took her “profession of perpetual vows” vastly more seriously than I did, years ago, when I stood before a congregation of worshippers and professed my faith publicly. But neither that young lady yesterday, nor Sister Teresa, nor me – nor anyone else, for that matter – no matter how seriously we take our oaths, is ever going to believe that what was said, what was sworn to, even in the presence of many others, will be some kind of spiritual shield against sadness and woe in this vale of tears. It won’t. It couldn’t have been. Such vows never have.

Still, I hear that ghost. “Swear!!!” he told his son. Heard him just yesterday again, in fact. As did a young Albanian school teacher, in the soaring heat of New Delhi, India. She too swore.

And when she did, all the ghosts, I’d like to think, went joyfully silent. Mother Teresa never simply went through the emotions. She played for keeps. For her, I'm sure, such swearing was no small thing.