Sr. M. Sabita's acceptance speech for Mother Teresa

We assemble here tonight to recognize Mother Theresa, Founder of the Society of the Missionaries of Charity. If Mother Teresa were here tonight to accept the Bishop Dozier Award for Peace and Justice, it is likely that she would share words about her faith journey and God's call in her life.

She initially joined the Loretto Sisters because they were working with the children in India. She worked for twenty years as a teacher in St. Mary's High School, which was mostly for middle class children. That was the only Catholic high school that the Sisters of Loretto had in Calcutta at that time. She was a contented religious woman, but she realized that God was calling her to go serve the poor in the streets. She felt God wanted something more from her. God's call was for her to stand with the poor in a country where poverty was rampant, where the city streets were laden with the abandoned and the homeless. God asked her to serve him and follow him in actual poverty, to practice a kind of life that would make her similar to the need in whom He was present, suffered and loved.

In 1950, the Holy Father approved the new congregation of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa did not choose this name, "Missionaries of Charity", it came from God's call to her.

Mother Teresa's vision of a missionary of charity is and I quote: "A person who is sent to bring God's love, to prove God's love: that God loves the world, and that God loves the poor."

The call of Missionaries of Charity are to be religious. They are not social workers, not teachers, not nurses or doctors. They serve Jesus in the poor. They clothe him, visit him, comfort him in the poor and abandoned, the sick and the orphans, and the dying. All they are through their prayer, work and action is for Jesus. Their life has no other meaning or motivation.

Mother Teresa believes that if the Missionaries of Charity attend to the poor with the desire to give God to them, to bring the joy of Jesus which is their strength, then she believes the world will be full of peace and love.

The cry of the poor is not the same as it was in the 1950's. God's call to be for the poor is seen differently in our society. The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis or AIDS, but the feelign of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everyone. The greatest evil in our society is teh lack of love and charity, the indifference towards one's neighbor who lives at the roadside, those who are victim of exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease.

Today, there is a hunger everywhere, not only for a piece of bread, but hunger for God and hunger for love.

Our nakedness is not a lack of clothing, but rather the human dignity which we have taken from the poor. We treat them without dignity, purpose and discard them and their ideas as if their life has no meaning.

God calls us to respond to these blatant injustices in our world where we have taken the essence of a person and have stripped them of their dignity. Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity have given us an example through their lives that we too should be concerned about the poor, the abandoned and the battered in our Memphis area.

If Mother Teresa were here tonight, she would say and I quote, "The miracle is not that the Missionaries of Charity do this work. We do nothing. God does everything. All glory must be returned to Him. God has not called me to be successful. He called me to be faithful." We too can respond to that call with faithfulness and zeal of Mother Teresa and then we too can help change the face of our world.

More Information

If you would like more information about this special collection or the use of these materials for research, please contact:

Brother Robert Werle, Archivist
2455 Avery Avenue
Christian Brothers University Archives
Memphis, TN 38112
rwerle@cbu.edu
901-321-3243
901-321-3244 fax

Top of page | Archives Home

© Christian Brothers University