From the S&S archives: Mother Teresa's mission of love

MOTHER TERESA of Calcutta isn't the kind of person who would give out autographs in the airport. But when people recognize the short, frail nun in a white sari, they often ask for her signature. She gives them a prayer, instead.

"I wrote so many `God Bless Yous' on the plane today," said Mother Teresa at the Frankfurt airport. "I don't mind writing it, it is such a beautiful prayer."

To many Catholics she is a living saint. To some in India, where she lives and works, she is thought of as the incarnation of Kali, the presiding deity of the Bengalis.

But to Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work among India's "most wretched and the dying," her 38 years of work in the slums of Calcutta is a job that is neither special nor impossible.

"WE HAVE BEEN created for that: to love and to be loved," said the 74-year-old nun. "It is nothing special. Sanctity is not a luxury of the few. I cannot say I love someone and do nothing. I must conduct my love in living action.

"It is a simple duty for you, for me. You have to find sanctity in your work, and you will become holy."

Mother Teresa talked to The Stars and Stripes this week after arriving from Rome on her way to Berlin, where she will visit nuns of the religious order she founded, and visit the poor and sick people the sisters work with. From there she will go to Poland.

Mother Teresa Bojaxhiu, born of Albanian parents in Skopje, Yugoslavia, on Aug. 27, 1910, became a nun in Ireland in 1928. She spent her early years as a nun in Calcutta and worked as a teacher there for 20 years.

On Sept. 10, 1946, the day she calls her "inspiration day," Mother Teresa decided God was calling her to work among the sick and dying. She received permission from the pope to join the Medical Mission Sisters, where she received her first medical training. She began wearing a traditional sari and working in the Calcutta slums.

In 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionary Sisters of Charity.

The order adopted Mother Teresa's white sari, trimmed with a blue border, as its habit.

LIVING AMONG THE SICK and dying for so many years has not dulled the compassion or the joy of Mother Teresa.

The dark eyes set in her deeply creased face twinkle when she speaks of the spiritual healing of her sisters' work.

"A leper came up to me (in India) and said, `To see these young sisters come so close to us, it has taken away that feeling of rejection,' " Mother Teresa said. "Isn't that beautiful? For a leper, so badly deformed, to express such joy because of the coming of the sisters. It is wonderful."

But her eyes deepen into dark pools when she speaks of the work to be done.

"We can see more material poverty in some countries," she said, speaking of the sisters' mission in the United States. "You give someone a piece of bread and it (their hunger) is finished. But the terrible suffering of loneliness, the feeling of rejection is much harder to heal, it takes so long. Bread is not going to satisfy that.

"Hunger has never made people commit suicide. But many people have committed suicide because they do not feel wanted."

ALTHOUGH THE Catholic Church is suffering a lack of priests and nuns to fill its needs, Mother Teresa said she has no lack of workers. Her order has expanded from the Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta, founded in 1952, to 261 houses operated by sisters and brothers of 35 nationalities in 67 countries.

"That is a gift of God," Mother Teresa said of the number of people who have chosen to work among the needy. "I think the poor people are responding to that love (by joining the order)."

Yet Mother Teresa says that everyone, not only those who give their lives to the poor and sick, can be holy.

"It is the person himself. The soldier is doing his duty. If his heart is clean, his work is sanctified.

"A soldier's life is always something beautiful," Mother Teresa said. "He is working for the good of his country; he is guarding his country.

"Each one of us does what he can do. I cannot do what you do. I'm sure you also work many hours each day. It's a job like any other job. A soldier's job is a job. He has to work for his family."

WHILE SPEAKING ABOUT the beauty of a soldier's life, Mother Teresa avoids discussion of nuclear weapons and the debate that follows from them. Her mission is one of love. She leaves the larger issues for others.

"Everything that has to do with politics, these things I never get mixed up in," she said. "How to bring people to love each other, that is much more important.

"When you come before God, you never look at anything else. You forget everything. I serve just one, one, one, one. You can be lost in numbers and do nothing. We must work to love just one person at a time.

"We have chosen to serve Christ in this work. Whatever we do, we do to him. 'I was hungry, I was naked, I was homeless,'" she said, quoting Jesus. "We do only that. We feed the hungry, we clothe the naked, take care of the sick and give a home to the homeless."