Mother Teresa did what she always did when she found Jesus in distressing disguise. She rolled up her sleeves and got to work. This time she found the Christ in a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican youth from the Bronx, already in the advanced stages of AIDS, nearly blind and with lesions from Kaposi’s Sarcoma all over his body. His father was sitting on a chair next to Francisco, silently weeping. As Mother Teresa removed Francisco’s soiled diaper and began to gently clean his anus with a wet rag, the old man was moved by her lack of fear. Everyone at the time thought AIDS was highly contagious, and yet Mother Teresa was cleaning his explosive diarrhea without even wearing gloves. The diminutive nun had founded the Gift of Love hospice in 1985 to take care of men afflicted with AIDS. When some of the locals had complained about establishing an AIDS hospice in their neighborhood, one of them had told Mother Teresa that the disease was a punishment from God and that she needn’t worry about the dying men as they were all repulsive homosexuals. “We don’t call them homosexuals,” Mother Teresa had responded curtly. “We call them children of God.”

“Oh, it hurts!” Francisco cried. “My backside is covered with sores and even rubbing it with your wet sponge makes me feel pain.”

“I realize that,” replied Mother Teresa. “But we can’t let you remain with your diaper full of diarrhea. It doesn’t befit the dignity of a man made in the image and likeness of God. I am trying to be as gentle as possible as I clean you.”

“In the image and likeness of God? Are you referring to me? Given my condition, I do not think that I resemble Jesus in any way. And the only reason I got this cursed disease in the first place is that I didn’t follow Jesus’ precepts. I was a perverted and promiscuous man even though I was raised a Catholic. Not surprising that I got punished with this monstrous illness.”

“You are more similar to the crucified Christ than you can ever imagine,” responded Mother Teresa. “Your body is full of lesions like the wounds of Christ. And God isn’t punishing you, Francisco. He did not will your disease. But now that you are afflicted by it, He means to use it as a means to impart his sanctifying grace upon your soul.”

“Do you think the Lord still loves me, wretched creature that I am? It is not only my body but also my soul that is disfigured.”

“Your own father is sitting at your side in these trying moments because he loves you. Amidst all your pain that should be a source of solace. Many of the other men in this hospice must bear their suffering alone because their parents have deserted them. I wish I could approach such parents and beg them to remember their sons. You have a duty to admonish the sinner, I would tell them, but you should never cease to love him. Never, ever abandon them. Well, inasmuch as your father loves you, you should realize that Jesus loves you infinitely more.”

And then Mother Teresa clutched Francisco’s hand firmly. She had learned many years earlier that a gesture as simple as that gives great courage and affirmation to the dying. Francisco’s response was to beam with joy. Mother Teresa correctly divined that at some point he must have been a handsome man given the startling contrast between his piercing blue eyes and his jet-black hair.

“Never forget that you are beautiful in His sight,” said Mother Teresa, “that you are loved by Christ as if you were the only person on the planet. Suffering is not necessarily something to be desired, but if understood correctly, it can be seen as a sharing in Christ’s Passion. When you suffer greatly, it is as if Jesus is so close to you that He can kiss you. Suffering makes you trust in God and God alone. And that is an inestimable bounty.”

“Would you lead us in prayer?” asked Francisco’s father in a Spanish accent after Mother Teresa had finished cleaning his son. The old man wiped his tears with a handkerchief and nervously clasped his hands together. He was dressed in the uniform of a plumber.

“Yes, let’s pray the Rosary,” Francisco said in his weak voice. “My grandmother Graciela – we used to affectionately call her Lala – always prayed the Rosary. As she walked to the bus station that took her to work, she would always be counting the beads and begging the Virgin Mary to pray for us at the moment of our deaths.”

“Mary is the most powerful of intercessors,” said Mother Teresa. “I have my Rosary with me at all times. Nothing would please me as much as praying it with you today. And I am sure that when the moment of death comes, Mary shall be at your side fulfilling the prayers of your grandmother so many years ago.”

“Can we pray that my death will come gently? I realize that I have not much time left to live. Pray that my body will not deteriorate completely, that I not become completely blind, that I not suffer from AIDS-related dementia before I die…”

“We can pray for that and more,” responded the tiny nun, “that you be ushered into the Kingdom on seraphs’ wings, that you shall not only regain your sight but have the beatific vision.”

“You think I can enter Heaven despite all my transgressions, a wicked man like me?”

“Have you taken the Sacrament of Reconciliation after the onset of your disease?” asked the nun. “If you have, the sins of your past mean nothing.”

“You mean Confession?” queried Francisco.

“I like to refer to the sacrament as a reconciliation with God. But yes, Francisco, I am asking you about Confession.”

“No, not yet,” admitted Francisco.

“Well, make haste,” responded Mother Teresa. “You don’t know how much time you’ll have to reconcile yourself with God.”

“Send me a priest so I can do so,” Francisco replied.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Francisco’s father as he held Mother Teresa by both hands. “I have been praying for my son’s conversion for years.”

***

Angeze Gomxha took her first religious vows in 1931 at the convent of the Loretto nuns in Calcutta, India, when she was twenty-one years old, and she took on the name Mother Teresa. It was soon after she became a nun that she discovered extreme poverty was not only dangerous to the body but that it could also be corrosive to the spirit. She suspected it already, having spent two years witnessing the desperate destitution of the masses, families crowded into makeshift shacks built of calamite and cardboard, men sleeping on the streets wearing nothing but a loincloth, skeletal children competing with mangy dogs to find scraps of food among the smoldering piles of trash accumulated on either side of unpaved roads. But what she saw one sultry summer afternoon in the Entally slums was to determine the course of her entire life.

She and a group of nuns had been distributing food to the children of “untouchables” starving in the slums, which were known as “bustees.” Such children were not only desperately poor they were also deemed unworthy of even being touched, incapable of receiving love, only a notch above the lepers in Calcutta’s rigid hierarchy of class. At some point, when the nuns’ supply of food was almost gone, a skinny boy no older than ten approached the women and motioned with his hand as if inviting them to follow him. Mother Teresa handed him a loaf of bread and a bit of cheese, but the boy didn’t leave the nuns and didn’t cease to beckon them. “Come follow me,” he said in the Bengali language, “let me show you something.”

Mother Teresa trudged behind him, accompanied by Mother Agnes. He led them up a small hill toward a garbage dump and pointed to a rusty cylindrical container. What Mother Teresa saw when she peered into it shocked her to the core. There, atop a pile of newspapers and sundry bits of trash, lay a naked infant covered only by a filthy towel. Mother Teresa realized the baby was still breathing, covered in traces of blood and amniotic fluid, and took her in her arms.

“How long has she been here?” asked Mother Teresa.

“Only since this morning,” said the boy. “My mother says she cannot raise another child.”

“Take me to her,” ordered Mother Teresa. “This baby needs to get breastfed immediately. Where does your mother live?”

“Up that road,” the boy responded, pointing to a mud alley way.

“We need to baptize her,” Mother Teresa said to Sister Agnes. “Give me a bottle of water. She’s breathing very slowly and might not survive.”

“What will you name her?” asked Mother Agnes.

“Mary,” replied Mother Teresa as if it went without saying.

Mother Agnes handed her a small plastic bottle of water.

“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” intoned Mother Teresa as she poured water on the baby’s bloody forehead. “You shall be baptized ‘Mary’ like the Mother of Jesus, like the Queen of Angels.”

Then the ten-year-old said in an urgent voice, “Don’t get my mother in trouble. She didn’t mean to kill her. She hoped somebody would find her.”

“And we found her!” exclaimed Mother Teresa. “Now take me to your mother. I don’t mean to turn her in.”

The boy led Mother Teresa and Mother Agnes up a steep road until he stopped at a one-room calamite shack where they found the boy’s mother surrounded by four other malnourished children, none of them older than six. When the woman saw the two nuns with the baby, she started to bawl uncontrollably and desperately tried to rip out her hair.

“I can’t feed another child!” she cried out. “The other ones are already starving! I’ve had to bury three of them already.”

“I’m not here to judge you,” answered Mother Teresa in a soft voice. “I just want you to breastfeed her, so she won’t perish. Then you and the other kids can go with us to the convent, and we’ll house you, figure out how to help you.”

The child suckled at her mother’s breast as the gaunt woman gently smiled.

***

It had been seventeen years since Mother Teresa arrived in India, and she was still shocked by its abysmal poverty: bustling children as young as five begging on the streets for a coin or a piece of bread; emaciated teenage girls selling themselves for a pittance because they had no other means of sustenance; old men abandoned by their families lying on the streets covered only by sores and newspapers. Yes, she was still shocked, perturbed, troubled to no end by the condition of India’s multitudinous poor, and she saw that no one cared – no one cared one whit. The well-off walked past the misery as if they didn’t see it, didn’t see the thirsting Christ in the faces of the children, the teenage girls, the decrepit old men… And she herself had learned to walk past them as if she didn’t see them, for she did not have the money to help all of those the Christ put in her presence. There were only so many rupees to be distributed among the lice-ridden children, only so many girls she could rescue by moving them to the Loretto convent, only so many lonely old men that could be moved to a hospital. Mother Teresa felt a limitless sorrow which wasn’t quenched by her small acts of charity. Something more had to be done. The Christ had said, “What you did to the least of me, you did to me.” Mother Teresa felt that what she had been doing so far was clearly not enough. Teaching Indian girls at Saint Mary’s High School was well and good, but they were not the ones in the greatest need of care, in the greatest need of love. It was the masses crowding the city aimlessly like desperate zombies, hungry for food, thirsty for love, that Mother Teresa had to save.

On September 4, 1946, the Lord Himself made His presence known to her and told her how to do it.

“I thirst,” the Lord Jesus had begun as she was sitting in a train meant to take her to her annual retreat at Darjeeling. The nun had been perturbed by the Voice and initially tried to ignore it by reciting the Rosary. But the interior locutions continued.

“I thirst and you alone can satiate my thirst,” said the Lord. “Why do you seek to flee from me, my little bride? If you had been at Calvary, watching me slowly die, would you have denied me a glass of water?”

“How can I quench your thirst?” Mother Teresa asked interiorly. It was the first time – not the last – that the Christ would appear to her in person.

“There are so many people suffering from material and spiritual poverty in Calcutta, indeed in the whole world,” said the Voice. “I want you to tend to the poorest of the poor and that way you could save many souls for me. So many people die in despair, not having heard My message. I want you to go out into the slums, to find the poor and minister to them where they live. You must abandon the convent and live in the destitution of the streets so you can be one with the poor, indivisible from them. You must give up all comforts and live a life of hardship and rigorous poverty just like the ones you are meant to save. Clean their sores, my daughter. Clean their sores spiritual and physical. Wilt thou refuse me?”

Mother Teresa had made a vow of absolute obedience to Jesus so many years before, even before she became a nun. She could not refuse even the most outlandish of His requests. But still she feared not being able to carry out the enormity of His mission.

“I am the handmaid of the Lord,” she said. “Just tell me what to do. But if it is possible, let this chalice pass from me. I do not feel strong enough to follow such an order.”

“I want you to establish a new society of religious, nuns who will live among the poorest of the poor. Aside from the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, I want you to pledge a full-hearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. You shall live by begging for yourselves and for your poor. Initially, it will be just you, by yourself, doing the impossible, but I shall take pity on you and increase your numbers. I give you my word that many women will join you, impossible as it might seem. The more you trust me, the more I shall do for you.”

“It shall not be easy to convince Archbishop Perier or my Superiors at Loretto to allow me to minister to the poor directly in their slums, all by myself. But if you say so, Lord –”

“I promise you it will not be easy,” said the Voice, “but neither shall it be impossible. I am the God of the impossible. Leave it all to Divine Providence.”

During the ensuing days, the locutions became more and more insistent, accompanied by a constant refrain: “Wilt thou refuse me?”

The more Mother Teresa thought about it, the more difficult she saw the road ahead. What could she – a little ant, a little nothing – do to bring aid to the throngs of Calcutta’s slums, wanting for everything? Where would she start? Whom would she help? How to convince anybody to join an Order demanding so much from its members, not merely to help the poor but to be the poor? So, she prayed about it – relentlessly – and was rewarded by the Christ who did not cease to make His presence known to her.

“Remember I began with twelve apostles,” said the Christ, “and we evangelized the world. Saint Francis of Assisi, too, began by himself, eventually enlisted a dozen followers, and by the end there were thousands upon thousands of Franciscans. Don’t worry about the immediate difficulties ahead. I know, like me, you thirst for souls. Don’t wait for the poor to come to you. Instead, leave the comforts of the convent and go to them in their misery. Wilt thou refuse me?”

“Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you,” replied Mother Teresa, “I desire to do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. But I would prefer not to be given such a Cross – to leave my Loretto nuns and the girls I teach and love, to lose all material comfort, to share in the lot of the starving and the dying. And I think I am unworthy, so unworthy. Surely you might find a more suitable person for your mission, someone less sinful and more generous.”

“You shall be more than suitable for the Work, as it will not be you who act, but I who acts through you. I want you to dress like the poor, not with a nun’s habit but with a simple Indian sari edged in blue and decorated by a small crucifix. You shall wear a white veil and always carry the Rosary with you. That shall be a sign to all that you are acting on my behalf. You shall stun the slum dwellers at first, but with time they will grow to love you. And it won’t be as difficult as you think, for I shall be your strength. Wilt thou refuse me?”

“You must enlighten Archbishop Perier. I’m sure he will balk at my request, doubting it comes from You and thinking I am raving mad. I’m sure he will point out the impossibility of such an endeavor, as well as cast doubt on its usefulness. If I myself am desperately poor, what could I do to help my brothers and sisters? Must I bear such a Cross, my Lord? It shall bring me nothing but pain and humiliation.”

“The Archbishop,” said the Voice, “shall initially be perplexed by your plans, but in due course he shall bless your mission. Don’t worry about being too poor to help the destitute. What they hunger for, more than food and drink, is love and faith, and you don’t need any money to provide them that. Sometimes a gentle smile will do or a word of reassurance. I am more dejected by their sins than by their poverty. They are in such desperate need of the Gospel that their souls are imperiled by want of love. You must bring the Good News to the dark holes where they live, the filthy streets where they die unnoticed and alone. And as I have already told you, I’ll alleviate your material needs. Your vocation is to love and suffer, sinful and incapable as you might be. In me and with me, you can do everything. Wilt thou refuse me?”

“You know, Jesus,” Mother Teresa said, “I am ready to do whatever you ask of me.”

Once Mother Teresa had irrevocably decided to follow Jesus’ order to minister to the poorest of the poor, she did everything possible to get swift approval for her new society – the Missionaries of Charity – from Archbishop Perier of Calcutta, from the Mother Superior of the Loretto order in Ireland and from the Pope himself. When Archbishop Perier delayed, telling her he had to take his time to consider the worthiness of her cause, she sent him letter after letter, making an insistent demand.

“Every day we fail to begin the Work for souls, it is another day that an old, abandoned man dies in utter loneliness and destitution, another day that a young prostitute dies without being saved. There are millions starving, millions living in habitual sin. I realize that you think I am unduly impatient but let me remind you that the Christ is impatient too. Daily, He makes it clear that he wants me to begin the Work for souls as soon as possible. Since the Work for souls is the will of God and not my own, it will not fail.”

On September 4, 1946, sixteen months after Mother Teresa received “the call within a call” on a train to Darjeeling, Archbishop Perier attended a Mass at the Loretto convent and after its completion uttered four simple words to Teresa: “You may go ahead.” Soon the Mother Superior of the Loretto Order in Ireland, Mother Gertrude Kennedy, also gave her blessing and that of Pope Pius XII followed in August 1948. By March of 1949, she got in touch with two young women who had expressed an interest in joining her new Order and living in utter poverty among the slum dwellers of Calcutta. It was only two women, thought Mother Teresa, but God was working. Soon the numbers multiplied at such a pace that it became clear to Mother Teresa that God was taking care of everything.

***

As soon as she began to live among the slum dwellers of Motijhil, Mother Teresa was beset by a stubborn temptation. Quit the slums! Go back to the lovely Loretto Convent! Continue to teach privileged Bengali girls! Other nuns faithfully follow Jesus without sacrificing every possible comfort! And you can do so little to alleviate Calcutta’s massive poverty any way! Mother Teresa prayed for strength. She knew the Christ had especially chosen to give her the Cross of poverty,  and she would not falter in her purpose, no matter the nagging doubts which could come only from the enemy. It was true, though, that she could do so little, at least at first. There were so many indigent people living on the streets, on the sidewalks, huddled together on straw mats. On her first day walking through the slums piled high with trash and human waste, she had seen a starving man dying on the ground muttering nonsensical phrases, wearing only a white cloth called a dhoti about his waist. In Jesus’ time, he would have been called a demoniac, but Mother Teresa saw in him a victim soul transported to insanity by his hunger, loneliness and fear. She had no money with her – had already handed out all she had before running into the madman on the street – and she had no food or water either. How, then, could she help this man? There was nowhere to take him, no hospital where he could be given rest and aid, no soup kitchen to feed him. She tried to give him some spiritual consolation, but even though she spoke in Bengali, she realized he could not understand a word, for the man was no longer in control of his senses. The next day she returned to the site, bringing with her some food and milk as well as some rupees and a medal of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But he was no longer there, nowhere to be found. Perhaps he had died the night before or was sleeping nearly naked on another street. And it would happen again and again, running into desperate people cast aside by the world to whom she could not possibly give help. Perhaps it was a quixotic quest anyway. Perhaps it was a fool’s errand as everybody said. But then she reminded herself of the words the Christ had impressed upon her before going out into the slums  – take courage! it is I! do not fear! – and she redoubled her efforts. If she could help but one child, help save but one soul, it would be enough to make all the sacrifice worthwhile, and there would be no reason for regret. They were the pangs of birth, after all – her new Order was being born – and there was no birth without pain no matter how lovely the child. And Mother Teresa prayed. Oh, Lord, how she prayed!

Soon Mother Teresa received blessings from unexpected quarters. First, two brothers of Portuguese descent allowed her to use a flat without paying rent where the Missionaries of Charity could be housed. Second, a number of young women joined the Order full of youthful brio and determination, including two girls who would become known as Sister Agnes and Sister Gertrude. Not long thereafter, a third aspirant, eventually known as Sister Margaret Mary, also joined them. With the passage of time, another eight aspirants joined Mother Teresa in her flat, all of them former pupils from Saint Mary’s School. By then, it was clear to Mother Teresa that she could not help everyone on the streets, but that she could help quite a few. She got in touch with certain Hindu and Catholic doctors who volunteered to treat indigent patients at five dispensaries set up by Mother Teresa with money generously provided by donors. She and her small group of helpers visited the families living in the slums and distributed food, medicine and milk often purchased with money for which Mother Teresa’s helpers begged from door to door. Hospitals were found where the ailing could be nursed back to health or allowed to die in peace. Small children were taught about the Christ, taken to Sunday Mass and guided to receive the Sacraments. All in all, it was remarkable progress.

By June of 1950, there were twelve women in the Missionaries of Charity and word was being spread throughout India and beyond: the Missionaries of Charity were performing wonders among the poor. Many young women felt that Christ was calling, come, bear your Cross and follow Me! Mother Teresa learned what Saint Francis of Assisi had learned many centuries before, that a life of abnegation and poverty could be enticing to the many, that many would accept to be poor by choice if God made the invitation. There were more and more girls wanting to enlist with the Missionaries of Charity, ready to promise to dedicate their lives to the care of the poor, the infirm, the abandoned, the sick, the leper, and to aid in their conversion and sanctification. There were more and more girls who wanted to live a life of constant prayer, saying the Rosary continuously all day as they went from place to place, even mouthing prayers as they put on their rough-hewn clothes each morning. Mother Teresa had no doubt about it: her little Society’s work was redounding to the greater glory of God! The birth pangs were over, though not the suffering shared with the poor and for the poor. “I fear all things from my weakness,” wrote Mother Teresa to Archbishop Perier, “but I trust blindly in His greatness.” While she had once asked God to let the chalice of suffering pass by her, now she was praying that she drink only from that selfsame chalice of pain. And her prayers were answered in a way she could not have anticipated. She would be allowed to suffer in an unexpected realm. She would be allowed to say with her Lord: I thirst!

***

In 1952, Mother Teresa founded Nimral Hriday, A Place of the Immaculate Heart, next to the ancient Hindu temple of Khaligat. The welcome sign at the entrance still announces the words of Mother Teresa: “Let every action of mine be something beautiful for God.” Another sign simply says, “Let us pray the Work by doing it with Jesus, for Jesus, and to Jesus,” clearly stating Mother Teresa’s belief that it was Jesus Himself to whom she was tending when she cared for India’s desperately ill, its lepers and its outcasts. Amidst all the anguish and pain of a hospice for the dying, Nimral Hriday first and foremost was a place of joy. "A beautiful death," Mother Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels – loved and wanted." She was convinced that the foundation of the hospice was the work of Divine Providence. After all, the Missionaries of Charity were penniless. Who would have imagined that the local government, made up of Hindus, would have turned over the Khaligat property to them for their little hospital? But for God’s intervention, Nimral Hriday would have been an impossibility. But Mother Teresa knew that everything is possible with God.

At first, there were only fifteen sick persons at Nimral Hriday, a drop of water in the ocean of India’s diseased and downtrodden, but Mother Teresa knew that number would grow. At all events, she subscribed to the admonition of her patron saint, Therese de Lisieux, that we should strive not so much to do great things, but to do small things with a great love. On the very day of the foundation of A Place of the Immaculate Heart, Mother Teresa provided a shining example of charity to the other sisters in her Order. She took on the most challenging tasks – dare one say the most disgusting – with a cheerful disposition. One of the first patients to arrive was an “untouchable” with an enormous bleeding sore on his stomach, oozing a green and yellow pus. The ulcer was so large that it seemed to cover his entire belly and multiple maggots had invaded his putrid flesh. Mother Teresa, seeing the Christ in distressing disguise, gently cleaned the wound with a wet sponge and removed the gray maggots with her fingers. Then she took the dying man’s hands in her own and said, “Courage, brother! You are loved.”

She asked the man if he would want to be baptized, but he didn’t understand. Mother Teresa knew that even before his grotesque wound, the man had been deemed “untouchable” by the Hindu faith. She thought he might be open to a religion that said not only that he could be touched by humans but could also be loved by God. She made a point of never forcing a Hindu or a Moslem to convert to Catholicism and respected their wishes at the time of death. If they wished to remain Hindus, she would obtain water from the Ganges River to wash them before death as their faith demanded. If they wished to remain Moslems, their bodies would be buried in a shroud, without a casket, with their head pointing toward Mecca. But before they died, she always told them about the Christ, and many were receptive to her message. The man with the open wound asked her what she meant by Baptism.

“About two thousand years ago,” explained Mother Teresa, “God appeared on earth taking human form. His name was Jesus. He healed many lepers, cured the paralytics, gave sight to the blind, drove out demons and even raised Lazarus from the dead. But most importantly, He came to expiate the sins of men, and He did it by dying on a cross. What I mean is that he was nailed to two wooden beams until He expired. But on the third day after His death, Jesus rose again and from his perch in Heaven continues His healing work.”

“This Jesus as you say,” the sick man responded. “Can He heal my wounds?”

“Yes, He can, and that is why I want you to be baptized. I shall pour a little water on your head and the Holy Spirit will infuse you with His grace. Either He will heal you now or all your wounds will be healed when you live with God in Paradise.”

“Pour your water on me then,” said the sick man. Mother Teresa swiftly complied.

Some two weeks later, under the care of the Missionaries of Charity, the man made a remarkable recovery. The open wound simply healed, the maggots disappeared. He walked out onto the streets with pride. Mother Teresa attributed his miraculous healing to “God’s Work” and thought nothing of her own participation in his cure. Others began to whisper that she was a saint.  Soon many other patients were healed miraculously at Nimral Hriday.

Not all the Missionaries of Charity dealt with the dying with the tenacious courage of Mother Teresa. At some point, Mother Teresa directed Sister Mary Margaret to wash a man in an advanced stage of leprosy. The man’s nose had rotted away, his hands and feet were disfigured clumps of flesh, his entire body was covered with open sores. Mother Teresa was used to cleaning lepers’ wounds and called it a beautiful experience because when she washed them, she felt she was nursing the Lord Himself. Sister Mary Margaret’s reaction was a little different. When she went into the room where the leper was lying and saw him, she simply retched and escaped the room in tears.

“Seeing him fills me with sadness and despair,” she admitted to Mother Teresa amid her tears. “And frankly, I fear the possibility of contagion if I touch him. I fear that if I wash him, I too will contract the disease, and I shall become a mutilated monster just like him. If you saw the man, you would understand my terror.”

“Go right back into that man’s room,” Mother Teresa ordered peremptorily. Sister Mary Margaret remembered that Mother Teresa was often called a benevolent dictator, and like a general, she had the habit of command. “And don’t be crying,” said Mother Teresa. “This is a place for happiness. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. We don’t want our guests to think that all hope is lost by lapsing into despair ourselves. Go wash that man, kiss his wounds if possible. Remember you are ministering to the Christ Himself. As far as contagion, do not fear. It’s all in the hands of God. If you are meant to get sick, it will happen even if you are thousands of kilometers away from the lepers of Calcutta. And if you are meant to be untouched by the disease, you shall be untouched even if you daily share your bread with them. Courage, Sister Mary Margaret! Don’t forget your promises to Jesus! Christ is thirsting for you on that bed. Will you refuse Him?”

***

Mother Teresa always demanded that her nuns project a joyful disposition. No matter how penurious the conditions of those to whom they ministered, the Missionaries of Charity were required to smile when they were in their presence. The nuns were to radiate the joy of God  and embody the Christ’s simple message not to give up, preaching by their example as much as by their words. If they felt pity, fear, or sadness, they were to conceal it. If they experienced the temptation to despair, they should redouble their prayers and offer those whom they encountered a beaming face full of bliss. Under no circumstances should the sick or the destitute ever be allowed to conclude that their conditions were beyond repair. Mother Teresa always told the sisters they were never to forget the duty of delight nor that Jesus was a source of perpetual joy. In fact, if they could not do so, she suggested, perhaps it would be best for them to abandon the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa would experience the difficulty of her command to rejoice in her own soul. There were so many days when she felt like collapsing under the great stone of despair and her unremitting distress. “I have as my companion darkness,” she wrote. On those days, she forced herself to pretend nothing was wrong and to smile and smile and smile. Nobody could know of her inner turmoil, nobody should guess how far she felt from God. Gone were the days when the Christ communicated with her directly. Gone were the days when she felt at union with God simply by being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. She felt alone, abandoned, unholy, too dirty for God to cleanse, too worthless for God to love, too wretched for God to forgive. And yet she offered God her pain – the unbearable agony of feeling so distant from Him – as a means to share in His Passion and quench His thirst for love. Even when she experienced doubts about God’s very existence, she offered her doubts to Jesus. “I want to love you more than you have ever been loved,” she prayed, “and yet I feel such anguish, a sense that You are beyond my reach.” But she kept a stiff upper lip and kept ministering to the destitute as if nothing were happening within her. She continued to laugh and to work as hard as ever. Indeed, perhaps she worked even more. Her joy was infectious as always, but it was no longer genuine. So far from God, so far from God, so far from God.

Mother Teresa could do nothing to rid herself of her stubborn disquiet, but nobody that interacted with her could ever suspect the daily hidden martyrdom of her soul. Despite her inner pain, she never ceased telling her nuns that the requirements of the Missionaries of Charity were total surrender to the Christ, loving trust, and perfect cheerfulness. Her slogan remained, “Be brave and keep smiling.”  Although sometimes she felt utterly abandoned by God, still she wanted to refuse Him nothing. She wanted to kiss the glorious Hand that was nailing her to the Cross. She still wanted to give herself completely to the Lord through prayer and through her care of His suffering alter egos. Perhaps in feeling such spiritual dryness – I thirst! – she was uniting herself with His suffering at Calvary, with the infinitely thirsty God. Perhaps she was uniting herself with His pain as He was crucified. And yet her doubts did not subside.

Eventually she confided her feelings of desolation with Archbishop Perier and Father Van Exem. The feelings of loneliness – of being separated from God – were so great she had to share them with someone. But in front of her sister Missionaries, she did nothing to alert them to her stubborn anxieties. Perhaps if they read between the lines of her letters, they could have surmised that her constant smiles concealed a deep spiritual pain. “Keep smiling,” she commanded. “Smile at Jesus in your suffering – for to be a Missionary of Charity, you have to be a cheerful victim. Keep smiling for Jesus and for me.” When she wrote to Archbishop Perier, she was a little more forthright although even to him she did not initially disclose the full extent of her pain.

“Pray for me – for within me everything is icy cold – it is only that blind faith that carries me through, for in reality to me all is darkness.”

What she failed to tell the Archbishop was that sometimes she even lacked the consolation of her “blind faith,” for in her Christlike suffering she questioned everything. Later on, she was more forthcoming with the Archbishop, confessing that the agony of her soul was so excruciating that she was in danger of losing her faith.

“Perhaps I should admit this to my Confessor, for my thoughts border on the blasphemous. I am desperate, hopeless, in the deepest darkness. I feel like crying out as Jesus did on the Cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Where is the faith that strengthened me in the past? I realize that to sin is to despair and to despair is to sin. And yet I can do nothing to rid myself of the feelings of utter desolation which attack my soul. I feel myself abandoned by God, and I suffer from a stubborn agony. Where is my God? Where did He go? I have no faith.  I am bedeviled by thoughts which I fear make me a sinner – a vile worm – in the eyes of God. I seek Him in prayer, to no avail. The darkness doesn’t lift. The night doesn’t end. If there is a God, I hope He can forgive me, but no sunshine appears in the midst of my dark clouds. I am told God loves me, but I’m afraid sometimes I disbelieve it. All is darkness, all is pain, all is absence. My Lord gives me no consolation and my soul is empty.”

And yet her faith, though tested, was not dead. She never ceased to attend Mass at five in the morning every day or to take the Eucharist whenever possible. She prayed hardest when it was hardest to pray. In a subsequent letter to the Archbishop, she made it clear she still prayed although she referred to God as the Absent One.

And yet, during a retreat soon thereafter, she pledged to smile at God! She continued to admonish her sisters as well as the ill in her care never to cease smiling. Never for a moment did she deviate from her own advice.

In a letter to her Confessor, Father Picachy, she beseeched him to pray that she always keep smiling at the Lord. She also sent another missive to Archbishop Perier: “Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.”

Archbishop Perier responded, reminding Mother Teresa that she had promised to bear the suffering of the Poor if it would bring joy to the soul of Jesus and alleviate His pain.

“Well, God has answered your prayers and yet now you complain. Those poor you promised to emulate are not just destitute because of a life of material want. Their poverty comes from their distance from Jesus. In order to keep your promise to the Christ, He is letting you share in their spiritual pain as well as their economic destitution. It was the spiritual pain that most tortured Jesus as He was crucified – the pain of being unwanted and abandoned by His friends.”

There were two wolves battling over Mother Teresa’s soul – one signifying a solid faith, the other a metastasizing  despair – and Mother Teresa was not about to let the bad wolf in her spirit gain the upper hand. She saw the contradictions of her soul and decided to work through them through His Work – by aiding the sick, the leper, the abandoned. If the Lord did not make His presence known to her in prayer, she would continue to look for Him in the faces of the marginalized and the dispossessed. She promised Archbishop Perier that she would become an apostle of joy, that she would offer Jesus the joy of a pure heart. Then she prayed about it and reaffirmed that she wanted to please God with everything in her. It was not so much disbelief but longing for the presence of God that led to her inner torment.

***

During her many years of spiritual dryness, Mother Teresa’s work for the poorest of the poor did not abate. Not only did she continue to work with the desperately ill and the dying at Nimral Hriday, but she also established an orphanage for infants named Shushu Bhavan and a city of lepers named Shanti Nagar. By the time she built the leper colony, her feelings of anguish and distance from God had lasted more than fifteen years, but still she plodded on, relentlessly seeking her Lord wherever she saw a human need that was not met. She put into practice what she had learned in the Catechism: “The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God.”

As with all of Mother Teresa’s projects, Shushu Bhavan began small but with great aspirations, which many thought were wholly unrealistic. What many regarded as a stubborn obstinacy, her fellow Missionaries of Charity attributed to Mother Teresa’s unbridled belief in the Providence of God. “The Lord will provide in His own good time” was her answer to anyone who questioned her grand, quixotic plans (which with the slow passage of the years often became a reality). At first, there was space for about thirty babies at Shushu Bhavan, mostly newborns who had either been abandoned in the night in front of a hospital or left to die in a garbage dump. Others had been born in a hospital, but their mothers had quickly indicated they could not care for the child given their economic circumstances. And then there were the products of botched abortions, which happened more frequently than anyone would admit.

Doctor Patel was a gynecologist at one of Calcutta’s public clinics whom Mother Teresa had contacted to request that he send all abandoned infants to her new orphanage. In the first week since the opening of Shushu Bhavan, he had already sent her three newborns, two born to mothers unable to feed them and one found on a basket in front of the clinic in swaddling clothes. When Doctor Patel called Mother Teresa to tell her there was an infant born alive at his clinic after a failed abortion procedure, he advised her the child would probably not live more than a few hours. Mother Teresa indicated that he should send the baby to Shushu Bhavan anyway. While she was bottle-feeding another baby, Sister Mary Margaret entered the room with the newborn in her arms.

“Where do I put her?” she asked. “I’m afraid this baby girl will soon die.”

“Don’t put her anywhere,” Mother Teresa scolded her. “Cradle her in your arms and sing her a lullaby until she joins the Father in Heaven. Don’t you realize the precious child is in need of love? We’re not going to let her die alone.”

“She’s unconscious,” Sister Mary Margaret objected. “She can’t feel love or hear any lullaby.”

“Oh, give her to me,” cried Mother Teresa. “Here, take this bottle. Of course she can feel love, a human touch. Didn’t Saint John the Baptist leap in joy while he was in the uterus of his mother when the Virgin Mary approached them with the baby Jesus in her womb? Let us help this precious child meet her death in an atmosphere of love.”

“If you say so,” responded Sister Mary Margaret as she handed the infant into the arms of Mother Teresa. “But she can’t feel anything.”

“Don’t you think children feel pain while they are vivisected in the womb during an abortion? Just a few weeks after conception, the unborn baby is already starting to develop their senses. By four months, they start hearing sounds outside the mother’s body, such as music and their mother’s voice, sometimes even that of their father. Nobody tells you this, but I have studied the matter. And now that she is born, she can definitely hear and feel. Let us sing together a hymn to the Virgin Mary so that ever briefly on this earth this poor unwanted baby can feel surrounded by love.”

And the two women began to sing the Magnificat until the baby breathed no more. Aside from her work with the infants and the dying, Mother Teresa eventually launched another project, Shanti Nagar, the “City of Peace” in 1965. Just as she wanted the newborns to feel love, she wanted the lepers to experience love as well. Her words were clear: “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of being unwanted.” She had begun her work with the lepers early on in her career as a nun, eventually providing ambulances – she called them “mobile leper clinics” – that would visit leper colonies and deliver needed medications. In some cases, lepers could be cured, in others the progress of the disease could be arrested. But what Mother Teresa most desired was to restore the lepers’ dignity for in their discolored lesions she saw the wounds of Jesus. The more disfigured a leper was, the more Mother Teresa wanted her to feel she was a worthy member of humanity, fearfully and wonderfully made just as the psalm reminds us. So, she decided to establish an entire village to be populated by the lepers, organized by the lepers and governed by the lepers. She wanted the lepers to be self-sufficient to the extent they could and to find a place where they could live and work as ordinary men and women. Once again, she was told this was impossible, but she countered that nothing is impossible with God. Despite her private doubts, her secret anguish, there was a faith at the core of her being which made itself manifest and public when it was most needed. When everyone thought the project was destined to be aborted from the start, she told everyone the Good Lord would take care of it. Soon the government donated the land on which the leper colony was built, and donations began to come in from every corner of the globe. Eventually a great number of benefactors would contribute to her cause from throughout the world. Despite her own spiritual dryness, she continued to believe that miracles are commonplace and that the Work was safely in the hands of God.

The idea for Shanti Nagar was that the lepers would earn a living from their own work as opposed to living based upon what they received as alms. The Missionaries of Charity established a number of workshops. Some would be taught carpentry, others masonry, others farming, others how to weave, others were to run small shops and other businesses for the benefit of the community. The lepers would build the houses where they lived and share the benefits of their work with the less fortunate – those who were in the most advanced stage of the disease and whose hands were so disfigured they could not even hold a fork and knife. Among them was Pedro Gomes, a leper of Portuguese descent and a Roman Catholic who had once led a rather comfortable life as an accountant working in-house with a British insurance company. After he heard Mother Teresa speak at the inauguration of Shanti Nagar, he approached her and asked her how he could contribute.

“As you can see,” he said, “my hands are useless and mangled, but still, I would like to do something for the benefit of the community. I don’t want to be a burden to others. Is there nothing I can do?”

“Can you carry bricks?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he responded.

“Can you till the fields?”

“I couldn’t hold the hoe with my mutilated hands.”

“And you can’t handle money, I suppose. You couldn’t work in a store?”

“You have to understand my hands feel nothing. The reason lepers lose their fingers is not because of the disease itself but because of the rats biting at their hands or because of cuts that become infected. I would so much like to be useful, but apparently the curse of my leprosy won’t allow it.”

“Are you Catholic, Muslim or Hindu?” asked Mother Teresa.

“I was born and raised Catholic, but I haven’t gone to Mass in years. We lepers aren’t exactly welcome at most churches.”

“Well, there you have it,” said Mother Teresa. “We are building small chapels where the lepers can pray, a small temple for the Hindus, a little mosque for those of the Moslem faith, and a tiny church for the Catholics. I suppose you can still read, right?”

“Yes, my eyes are fine.”

“A priest will be coming to celebrate the Mass every Sunday at Shanti Nagar. You can read the Scriptures during the Mass. That shall be your contribution to the community. And you can become a praying soul for all those at Shanti Nagar. What function could be more important than that?”

“Yes, I can read the Scriptures, and I certainly can pray. I’ve prayed so hard for a cure to my disease, but the Lord hasn’t heard me.”

“Oh, the Lord hears you all right. But instead of expecting an outlandish miracle, listen to His small voice within your heart. It may be hard to believe it, but Jesus can use your disease as a means to endow you with His sanctifying grace.”

“I lost it all, Mother Teresa, my wife, my kids, my home and my career. I was used to driving a fancy car, to have a secretary at my beck and call, to be feted by powerful men. And now I can’t even write a sentence. My kids have entirely forgotten me. I hardly see that as a manifestation of God’s grace.”

“Pray for yourself and the whole community and you will achieve wonders. Never stop praying. God often answers in unexpected ways.”

The man began to sob.

“Just look at me,” he cried. “I don’t even look like an ordinary human being, with my disfigured nose, my shrunken eyes, the rotting lesions which cover my entire body.”

“Suffering by itself means nothing,” said the nun in a gentle voice. “But suffering in union with the Christ at His Cross means everything, my friend. Offer your pain to Jesus and your burden will be much lighter. Above all things, know that you are loved. The Missionaries of Charity will come to bathe you, clean your sores, feed you and pray with you as often as they can.”

“Thank you, Mother Teresa. Thank you so much. I shall gladly assist the priest you send us by reading from the Sacred Scriptures during the Mass at the proper time.”

“Life is a challenge,” said the nun. “Meet it in your own!  Know that you are not alone. God is always with you. And know that at some point there will be a saint for the lepers, Father Damian de Veuster, who ministered to the lepers of Hawaii and died as a leper himself after suffering for half a decade. Pray! Pray! Pray! Know that Father Damian is no longer a leper now, that he is a lovely figure with the Christ in Heaven.”

***

By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa was already a public figure, invited to speak in different venues around the world. As early as 1962, the Indian government had awarded her the Padma Shri, one of its highest civilian honors, for her services to India’s poorest of the poor. She was also honored in January of 1971 by Pope Paul VI, who awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. And other accolades were soon to follow. On 1975, the Philippine government awarded her the Masaysay Award for her humanitarian work. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to help the poor throughout the world, and the following year the Indian government  awarded her the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honor. Mother Teresa was wary of her new celebrity, for she was afraid it might incite her toward pride, the source of every other sin. But despite her initial reluctance she concluded her new fame was a manifestation of Divine Providence, since it allowed her to alert the world to the planet’s massive poverty, not only in India and the Third World but also in the West.

As she traveled throughout Europe and the United States, she realized that the First World was also afflicted by a great poverty, a different kind of poverty from that in India or Africa perhaps, but a grueling poverty, nonetheless. Human beings slept on the streets of New York City not because they were lepers but because they were drug addicts, or alcoholics or young homosexuals ousted from their homes after being diagnosed with AIDS. Many were forced to engage in the sex trade to satisfy a drug habit or rent a rat-infested home. Despite New York City’s many social programs, there were a multitude of mentally ill people living and dying on the streets like the untouchables of India. Mother Teresa concluded that many people in the developed world suffered from spiritual poverty, the worst poverty of all.

As usual, the motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity in New York City was located in the poorest part of the city, indeed in the poorest part of the country, in an abandoned two-story convent in the South Bronx, next to a row of burnt-out tenements and across the street from a housing project. A neighbor alerted the nuns that they should be wary of walking in the streets at night and to avoid a certain building which had been crumbling for years and which now was used as a den for crack addicts. Mother Teresa asked the man how many addicts to crack cocaine were in the city, and he told her that they numbered in the thousands. He also told her that crack addicts were completely unable to function in society and would be willing to do anything to get more of the drug, ready to lie, cheat, steal, even sell their tortured bodies for a pittance to smoke another pipe of crack.

“In that case, we should visit them,” replied Mother Teresa nonchalantly. “What do you say, my sisters? We’ve always promised to go to the place where the poor live, not to wait for them to come to us. Just as we sought out the poor of Calcutta in the place where they could be found, so must we attend to the drug addicts of New York City in the places where they congregate.”

“That’s not very advisable,” said the neighbor. “Many crack addicts are violent, especially when they’re high. If you want to help them, I suggest you go to certain places where social workers provide aid to those with substance addictions.”

“There is a difference between a social worker and a Missionary of Charity,” replied Mother Teresa in a stern voice. “The social worker strictly attends to people’s material and physical needs. The Missionaries of Charity, above all, seek to assure those on the margins of society that they are wanted and loved. Their loneliness is a greater suffering than their poverty. We seek to teach them, quoting Isaiah, that they are destined by God for good and not for disaster.”

“Well, you won’t be able to do that in the crack house. Those people are beyond repair. The only ones who can be helped are those who want to help themselves.”

“If we can save a single soul,” said Mother Teresa, repeating an old mantra, “then that shall be enough. For many weeks, our Missionaries in Cuba were only allowed to tend to a single dying man and yet the mission was a success. And no one is ever beyond repair.”

“There are probably more than sixty people in there, and I can assure you that you won’t get a single one to listen to you. You’ll be putting yourselves at risk for no good purpose. You should know that many crack houses have guards who use guns to keep people out.”

“I’ve been putting myself at risk for no good purpose – at least in the eyes of man – for over forty years. We have the audacity of the true believers. In New York City, the Christ comes to us in the distressing disguise of the drug addict, and He begs for help on every corner. Are we too afraid to slake His thirst? Or shall we be intrepid in His care? Maybe at this very moment there’s an adolescent boy or a young girl waiting for us in that crack house. You have to remember that God teaches us to believe in miracles. I shall toss a miraculous Virgin Mary medal into the crack house as we enter. That always seems to protect me.”

“Like I said,” the neighbor repeated, “I don’t think it’s wise for a group of nuns to enter the crack house.”

“Come,” Mother Teresa ordered her nuns, waving her right arm in the air dismissively and making short shrift of the neighbor’s warnings. “The Christ is calling us to His place of agony. He desires that we visit Him in Calvary, longing to be loved.” When Mother Teresa reached a decision, no matter how absurd to ordinary mortals, nobody could dissuade her. There was nothing meek about her once she had figured out God’s intentions for her. She did not worry about where the help would come but trusted blindly in the Providence of God.

On the following day, Mother Teresa, Sister Gertrude and Sister Mary Margaret entered the crack house around six o’clock in the afternoon, having been told that would be the time where they would find more people in the drug den. Contrary to their neighbor’s warnings, there were no armed guards waiting at the door. The first thing they noticed was the foul odor of the place as well as all the people sitting on the floor smoking crack in their glass pipes while others lay on the floor, having passed out after using the drug. The place was filthy, smelled of urine, rats were everywhere, and in certain places human excrement piled up. Soon after they arrived, a short, swarthy man approached them. He was not armed, but Mother Teresa suspected he was the one who ran the place, sold the addicts the crack, and oversaw all the activities at the house. Unlike all of the others in the crack den, the man was not under the influence of the drug.

“Who are you?” he asked as soon as he saw the three women in their white saris trimmed with blue and with rosaries in their hands. “You look like nuns. What brings you here? I hope you’re not allied with the police.”

Mother Teresa took the initiative in responding.

“We’re just here to see if anyone needs shelter for the night or a good meal. We have nothing to do with the police. All I plan to do is talk to them about Jesus. As you know, the existence of this crack house is an open secret. I’m sure the police know about it, but they don’t seem to care about the drug trade as long as it’s confined to the poorer areas of the city.”

“You just want to talk to the people? I suppose I have no problem with that as long as you pay me a little cash, let’s say a hundred dollars. But as you can see, they’re all busy getting high or have passed out.”

“Just let us walk around,” responded Mother Teresa. “Maybe we’ll find a single person who wants to be helped. I don’t have the money on me right now, but I promise to send it to you tomorrow. Our convent is just around the corner as you well know.”

“Proceed,” said the man. “As long as I know where to find you, you can talk to anyone you want.”

The three nuns began to make their way around all the addicts smoking crack. The whole place was dark, as all the windows had been covered by wooden planks. The users were so involved in their consumption of the “rock” that they did not seem to notice the presence of the three nuns in their midst. But the three nuns saw the Christ in those wretched, addicted creatures and soon began to preach. Mother Teresa thought that she had not seen such misery even in Africa, so many men and women of every color and race wasting away in the prime of youth.

The three nuns first approached a blonde man who had just arrived and was filling his glass pipe with crack, preparing to light it in order to get high. He did not look disheveled like the rest and Mother Teresa – blessed by the gift of reading souls – surmised that he was an offspring of the well-to-do, perhaps a university student.

“Don’t do it,” commanded Mother Teresa. “Soon you will be a slave to cocaine like all the others.”

“Leave it alone!” said the young man. “I’m not addicted, just enjoying a moment in this marvelous place where nothing is prohibited. This is my own little Nirvana.”

“I am from India and know the Hindu religion well. I can assure you that this place is nothing like Nirvana. And if you persist in your delusions, you’ll find yourself in a place that is its exact opposite. Come with us so that you can avoid losing your sense of self. Let us bring you to Jesus and you shall experience ecstasies unachievable through drugs.”

But the blonde man in horn-rimmed glasses did not budge and proceeded to light his pipe.

“Do you want to share?” he asked Mother Teresa derisively. Mother Teresa placed a Miraculous Medal of the Virgin Mary in his hands and let him be.

Mother Teresa had no better luck with the next few people she addressed. She realized that it would be virtually impossible to reach those high on crack and yet she persisted, giving each a Miraculous Medal of the Virgin Mary. Perhaps by mentioning Jesus to them, she could at least plant a seed in the center of their seemingly barren souls. Just as she was about to leave, however, she saw a tiny black child – she must have been no older than fifteen –sitting in a corner with a much older man passed out at her side. Mother Teresa correctly deduced that she had just exchanged her body for a little crack.

“We’re here to tell you Jesus can help you,” said Mother Teresa to the fifteen-year-old girl. Although she was still in the throes of her drug-induced condition, she reacted upon hearing the name of Jesus.

“While she was alive,” the girl confided in a groggy voice, “my grandmother Eileen Rose often spoke to me of Jesus. But those days are long gone. My mother is a crack addict like me, and my father is in prison.”

“What is your name, my child?” asked Mother Teresa.

“People call me Candy. Can you give me a little money?”

“I can feed and shelter you, but I can’t give you even a single dollar to buy more crack. Come with us, Candy. Our convent is just across the street. You can turn your life around because the suffering Jesus is with you and loves you more than you can imagine.”

“I don’t want to return to my mother because she beats me when she gets high,” Candy said. “And I don’t want to sleep in this house or on the streets. I have seen your convent and know that God is there. Have you brought with you a little water, sister? I thirst.”

Candy spent the night with the Missionaries of Charity and never left. Ten years later, after constant struggles and setbacks, she became a religious herself. God in His provident love came to the rescue.

***

To trust God in the light is nothing. To trust God in the darkness – that is faith.  For almost fifty years, Mother Teresa lived a long dark night of the soul, often feeling abandoned by her God, but she persevered. She found solace in the knowledge that Saint Paul of the Cross had endured a period of similar spiritual aridity for forty-five years but had been sent to Heaven. She placed her trust in her gentle and loving God, seeking Him out wherever she could find Him in those excluded by society – the leper, the senile old woman, the AIDS patient, the drug addict, the street child, the mentally ill, the unborn, the prostitute, the sinner, the unclean. She instructed her Missionaries of Charity to “accept whatever He gives and whatever He takes away with a big smile…” And she never ceased praying – her whole day was a continuous prayer – despite the frequent feeling that God was absent from her life. After all, she recalled that the Christ had felt abandoned too when He prayed alone the night before His crucifixion after all His apostles fell asleep and when He went through the Passion with a single apostle at His side. After vowing to take on the lot of the suffering Jesus, she could hardly complain that she felt the same sense of desolation as the Christ. Christopher Hitchens, a frequent critic of Mother Teresa, had described her as “a confused old lady who had … for all purposes ceased to believe,” but he failed to perceive that her Work was the ultimate expression of faith. In the Work, she found meaning, she found purpose, she found God.

By the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity numbered four thousand and had established five hundred ninety-two houses in one hundred twenty nations, from Tanzania to Mexico, from Ethiopia to Armenia, from the Philippines to Cuba, from the United Kingdom to Bangladesh. When asked if there was any place Mother Teresa had not reached, the nun replied with a laugh, “If there are poor on the moon, we shall go there too.” She was not without some vehement critics, however, as she had the habit of being blunt and fearless in the defense of those she deemed to be unwanted, including – or perhaps especially – the unborn. At her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1979, much to the chagrin of many of those in attendance who expected a saccharine message about helping the poor, she unequivocally stated that “the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?” She made a similar point at a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. before President Clinton and Vice President Gore, who both sat in silent discomfort while many applauded Mother Teresa’s unapologetic defense of life in the womb. Mother Teresa would not change her message no matter who was in the audience. To use an old trope, it was quite literally her mission to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Mother Teresa saw herself as Christ’s emissary to the skeptics.

In the end, death came suddenly as Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. As she was lying dead on her simple bed, all three hundred of the nuns living at the Calcutta motherhouse went into her room to kiss her forehead. Sister Gertrude, upon seeing her friend of fifty years on her deathbed, said simply, “She, too, was Jesus in disguise.”