Feast of St. Joseph the Worker 1999

Dearest Brothers and Sisters,

On Monday 1 March 1999 the Holy See officially announced the good news of the introduction of the cause of beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta without waiting for five years as the usual rule prescribes. This brought great joy to the whole world. Already this news had been sent in writing to the Archbishop of Calcutta in a letter dated 12 December 1998, which read: “I am pleased to send you the Rescript of dispensation from the requirement of waiting five years before the presentation of the written petition requesting the initiation of such cause”.

Since then there have been various interpretations regarding the exact nature of this dispensation, granted by the Holy Father through the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and so it is good to spell out what this dispensation really consists of. First of all let us see what it did not say.

-It did not mean to say that Mother Teresa is already being beatified nor is it said that she will or will not be beatified in the year 2000.

-Nor is it said that this exception means that the Holy Father is going to make exceptions also from the normal procedures of the beatification process that is required for any servant of God.

On the other hand:

-What is being said is that the Archbishop of Calcutta “may begin the Diocesan Enquiry into the life, virtues and reputation of sanctity of Mother Teresa in accordance with the norms to be observed in Enquiries made by Bishops in the causes of saints”, without waiting for the usual five year term.

-It also recalled the need “to gather all published and unpublished writings of Mother Teresa as well as all those documents which in any way regard the cause”.

Two of us, Fr. Brian and myself, have attended a four month course - November to March - on the causes of saints conducted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican, taking the due exams. Thank you for your prayers, sacrifices and words of encouragement: the professors were wonderful examiners which naturally helped in the obtaining of good results… I too prayed much for the professors!

This course helped me tremendously and opened my eyes to many avenues in my life. Not only is it going to be helpful in preparing and assisting with Mother Teresa’s beatification process but also on a personal level - as it clearly set out the parameters envisioned by the Church for holiness. “Holiness is not a luxury of the few, but the simple duty of you and me”, Mother Teresa used to instruct us. She taught us this on her five fingers: “I want, I will, with God’s blessing be holy”, and then on the other five fingers: “You did it to Me” (Mt 25:40). Both hands joined together in prayer enable us to do God’s will. The closer one is to God the closer one comes to one’s fellow human beings, especially the suffering ones. The closer Mother Teresa was to God, the nearer she was to the people, to the last, the least and the lost. “How could it be otherwise, since the Christ encountered in contemplation is the same who lives and suffers in the poor?”. St. Vincent De Paul, for his part, loved to say that, when one is obliged to leave prayer to attend to a person in need, that prayer is not really interrupted, because “one leaves God to serve God” (cf. V.C. 82).

Many have been asking about how far have we got with the preparatory work for the beatification of Mother Teresa. The entire process is rather complex, and I dare to say can even be rather tedious and involved. Let me explain a bit more in detail.

The Petitioner advances the cause of canonisation by appointing a Postulator by means of a mandate written according to the norm of law, with the approval of the Bishop. Who are the Petitioners and who is the Postulator for Mother Teresa’s cause?

The Congregation founded by Mother Teresa is the Petitioner. More concretely the Superiors General of the five Branches of the M.C. Family, that is to say the Superiors General of the various branches together appointed Fr. Brian as Postulator of the cause. Theoretically as the Postulator of the entire M.C. Family he is meant to be neutral as far as the various branches are concerned.

One cannot be a postulator and a witness at the same time. Perhaps this statement needs further explanation. A witness in the process of beatification of a martyr or a confessor is a person who has seen or has known the servant of God and is now called to give witness regarding the practice of the heroic virtues by the servant of God. These are mainly the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. These virtues must be practised by all Christians, but not all practice them to a heroic degree. The supreme way of practising them is by martyrdom. This can only be achieved through profound and continuous union with God, assiduous prayer, penance and above all the practice of charity, not just once in passing, but constantly.

I am supposed to be an ex-officio eye-witness to Mother Teresa’s cause of beatification. The good Lord granted me the grace to be with a saint for over 30 years. So my witnessing is about “what I have heard, what I have seen with my own eyes. What I have watched and touched with my own hands” (see 1 John 1-4). This is what I am called to give testimony to, and I am to testify to nothing but the truth so that my speaking the truth about the servant of God Mother Teresa may bring greater glory to the Holy Trinity and profound peace and joy to all men of good will.

There was, besides, our closeness to each other, which she often spelt out by saying: “We know each other by heart”. Very often my feeling was that of being with my own mother, and even more!

I would also like to say a word about our correspondence. I have made a collection of the letters which she wrote to me from 22 September 1971 to 23 August 1997, i.e. 13 days before her death. These letters are all hand-written, except the last three which are typed. For ease of understanding, I divided the letters into 3 sections: A, B and C.

Section A: letters written to Bishops, Cardinals and to the Holy Father regarding our Branch of the Missionaries of Charity, Contemplative, and also a few notes written to our Lay Missionaries of Charity Movement.

Section B : Mother’s letters written to the community and to me.

Section C : letters written personally to me.

All three sections put together and chronologically arranged amount to a total of about 81 letters.

On one of the last occasions that Mother visited us in our house in Rome, as she was at the gate she lifted up my small crucifix, then kissed it and said: “Oh, how beautiful this crucifix is, please give me one next time I come and I will wear it”. Without a moment’s thought I took off mine (the Sisters call it a ‘shoulder crucifix’) and gave it to her. She happily took it and kissed it, thanked me and went. On her last visit to Rome she showed it to me with great joy like a little child saying: “See your crucifix, now I am wearing it”. Needless to say I was very happy about it, and happier still when I came to know that she went home to God with it. During the week of her wake in St. Thomas’ Church, in Middleton Row, Calcutta, when there was no one else close to her body at nightime, I was tempted so many times to remove the crucifix and pin mine on her shoulder as they were identical, but a voice prompted me from within that it was better that our beloved Mother be buried with the same shoulder crucifix that she went home to God with. So I let it go and am not sorry as she has been a mother to me and I her unworthy son, and she dealt with me with such kindness.

As everyone is so eager to see the Servant of God Mother Teresa of Calcutta to be raised to the honours of the altar, we all need to explore more deeply her life of profound and assiduous union with God, her practice of the virtues of faith, hope and charity coupled with her practice of the moral virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance to a heroic degree, and above all her insatiable love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and her equally unquenchable love for Jesus in the poorest of the poor, the last, lost and the least. In a word, from morning to night she submitted herself joyfully to the Rule; she strove to be attentive to her prayers and recollected all day long; she practised the silence of the eyes, the heart and the tongue when she felt inclined to speak unnecessarily, or out of place and time. She accepted suffering without complaints, especially the unseasonableness of the weather, and showed herself extremely kind and gentle to all. She accepted humbly and patiently the reproaches made to her, she tried her best to accommodate herself to the tastes, desires and temperaments of others, she stood contradictions without irritation. She did all this not just once in passing, but habitually, not merely patiently but joyfully, purely for the love of God.

Her hunger and thirst for holiness was so strong that she became a very powerful magnet, so inseparably united to the Source of all holiness that all those who came in contact with her were irresistibly drawn not only to her but to the Source itself. May her Beatification draw millions of people to the Source and fountain of all holiness. To this end we all pray and ask for prayers.