22nd Week, Saturday, Sept 5th; St Mother Teresa of Calcutta
1 Cor 4:6-15 / Luke 6:1-5
Paul rebukes the Corinthians: We are fools; you are wise. 1. Greek dramatists portrayed Corinthians as drunk, depraved, and boisterous. When Greeks wanted to put someone down, they'd say, "He behaves like a Corinthian." The Greeks also used the expression "Corinthian girl" to refer to a prostitute. The Corinthians were not noted for gentility. They were citizens of a port city with all the vices of such a population. This explains Paul's biting irony in today's reading. Some Corinthian Christians had grown smug and complacent with their spiritual progress. Paul tried to wake them up. They were not half as spiritual as they made themselves out to be.
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Paul criticizes his Corinthians in an ironic way for their pretenses, but he says he does so because he loves them. What do they have that they have not received? A frequent sign of their own insecurity is that people seek security in laws and traditions. The more they insist on these, the more they try to bend people to these, the greater their insecurity. Laws are supposed to be in the service of the community, not vice versa. They may never become a block or a screen between people. They are not absolutes but servants of people.
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Do we sometimes grow smug and complacent in our own spiritual progress? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them!" Mt 5:3
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A maxim is a written set of principles or rules of conduct. In the 1st reading, St. Paul used this word to state a simple principle or rule and that is "Keep to what is written". Most probably he was referring to the Scriptures and to the written set of teachings that were handed to the Christian community at Corinth. He made recourse to that maxim because the Christians at Corinth were beginning to interpret the teachings to their own convenience and advantage. What was too demanding and affected them personally they would give leeway for themselves and go with the broadest possible options. St. Paul wanted to bring them to their senses and to help them see the truth and the reality of their spiritual deterioration.
Yet in the gospel, it was the Pharisees who were harping on keeping to the Law of the Sabbath. But their intention was to reinforce and propagate their religious fundamentalist ideas. But it is not a question of rigidity or laxity when it comes to religious teachings. Jesus came to teach us the Truth so that we will have freedom when we keep to His teachings. In Jesus, we have the Truth who will lead us to the Way of Life. Let that be our spiritual maxim.
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Many of the events in the Gospels are reported to make a point not only to the various early Christian communities but to make a point valid for all time. Jesus is the founder of the Christian community. His attitudes toward Law, Sabbath and religious observances are normative for all Christians at all times. For this reason, the story of grain-picking on the Sabbath was retold to show that Jesus' attitude toward Sabbath Law did not share the absolutist, obsessive quality that Pharisaic legalism had imposed on it. The Lord saw the Sabbath as celebrative of our liberation from sin and our new relationship with the Father. He refused to turn it into a burden that would cage people into a new slavery. This attitude remains normative for us.
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(In Corinth there were evidently problems of the human ego. The question of the inflated ego led to one person’s being championed over another. But when all is said and done, everything they had was gift. People began to brag about their accomplishments. The apostles continued to work incessantly as ministers of the gospel, often ridiculed and seen as fools; at the same time, there were those in Corinth who exalted themselves.
Paul writes to them as their father in Christ; it is a paternal admonition.)
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Self-esteem is something that we all cherish. But when this leads to self-adulation, we are wandering from true Christian humility. Christ rejected the request of James and John for places of honor in his kingdom. For anyone to be first, he must be the servant of all. It is the last who will be first. This is not an easy lesson to learn, but it is at the heart of the gospel. It is not surprising that Jesus showed little interest in the apostles’ plucking grain on the Sabbath. His concerns went far beyond that. When we are tempted to place ourselves on a pedestal, let us remember the apostles, who went hungry and thirsty while they followed Christ. It remains a great and noble thing to give oneself entirely for the cause of Christ, even if it escapes human notice.
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(Jesus loved to go through the cornfields. He will often speak about the corn, the sower, the weeds in the field, the great harvest. He will speak about the grain that dies only to rise up to new life. He sees in grain the bread that will be baked into the bread of life. The seed is me word that his apostles prepare, to satisfy the hunger of the soul. The bread is his body. The maturing wheat meant so much to him.
He meditates on it. That is how he spent his Sabbath. As the ears of wheat stroke their clothes, the apostles top feel hungry. They pluck those ears of corn, they eat them and they thank God for them. Filled with joy, they hear the Pharisees' vile accusation, that they violated the sabbath: reaping, threshing, winnowing and preparing food. Plucking the corn they called harvesting, rubbing it in their hands was threshing, flinging away the husks is winnowing. Eating it shows they prepared the food. Jesus had to tell them this. The apostles accepted that he is the Lord of the Sabbath.)
Let us Pray:
Lord our God, Jesus your Son came not to abolish the law but to fill it with the dimensions of love. Do not allow commandments and rules to stand between you and us nor between people, but let them lead us gently, as good educators, to you and to our neighbor and teach us to go beyond the law in generosity and serving love. Make us free with the freedom brought us by your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. God bless.
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Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Reflection: Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, present-day North Macedonia. When Gonxhe was eight, her father died suddenly, plunging the family into financial difficulties. At the age of twelve, Gonxhe felt a divine calling to serve the poor. Upon turning eighteen, she left home, never to see her mother or sister again, and entered the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ireland, known as the Loreto Nuns, with the desire to serve in India.
On September 10, 1946, when Mother Teresa was thirty-six, she was traveling by train roughly 400 miles from Calcutta to the mother house in Darjeeling for an annual retreat and time of rest. It was during this trip that something mystical occurred. Although she kept the details of that experience private, she later recounted, “I heard the call to give up all and to follow Him into the slums—to serve Him in the poorest of the poor…I knew it was His will and that I had to follow Him. There was no doubt that it was going to be His work.”
Finally, on January 6, 1948, the archbishop gave her permission to proceed. He later wrote to the Loreto superior, “I am deeply convinced that by withholding my consent, I would hamper the realization, through her, of the will of God.” After receiving permission from the Loreto Superior, as well as from the Holy See, Mother Teresa began her new mission on August 17, 1948, almost two years after her “Inspiration Day.”
On December 21, 1948, after completing medical training, Mother Teresa began her life as a Missionary of Charity in the slums of Calcutta. Calcutta had been heavily affected by World War II, famine, and ongoing riots. Countless people were homeless, poor, uneducated, and suffering intensely. After securing a place to live, Mother Teresa began caring for the poor. She dressed their wounds, showed compassion for the suffering, listened to their stories, provided them with food, and treated them as if they were Jesus. This was a novel approach in India where poverty was sometimes viewed as a result of bad karma. In March 1949, one of her former students joined her in the work.
By the following year, her companions numbered twelve. On October 7, 1950, with the approval of the Holy See, the Missionaries of Charity were formally established in the Archdiocese of Calcutta. In addition to the usual three vows, the Missionaries of Charity took a fourth vow “to devote themselves with abnegation to the care of the poor and needy who, crushed by want and destitution, live in conditions unworthy of human dignity.”
By the early 1960s, the number of sisters continued to grow, and houses were established in various parts of India. Shortly thereafter, the Missionaries expanded their reach to Venezuela, Rome, and Tanzania. In 1963, the Missionaries of Charity Brothers was established. A contemplative branch of the sisters was founded in 1976, followed by the Contemplative Brothers in 1979, and the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984. In 1962, Mother Teresa received the Padma Shri Award from the Republic of India, and in 1979, she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, which she accepted “in the name of the hungry, of the naked, of the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the leprous, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared, thrown away of the society, people who have become a burden to the society, and are ashamed by everybody.”
By the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 4,000, across 610 foundations in 123 countries. Two years after her death, Pope John Paul II opened her cause for canonization. He beatified her in 2003, and she was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was one of the greatest saints in all of history. After her death, those closest to her shared many of her private letters that tell an incredible story. From the time she began her work with the poor and suffering, she started to experience an inner darkness, a complete loss of the sense of God’s presence. This interior darkness mirrors the spiritual writings of the greatest mystics, such as Saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. God stripped her of every interior consolation so that her charity would be absolutely pure and devoid of all selfish motivation, resulting in pure selfless giving, fueled by unshakable faith, and driven by divine hope. She was truly a mystic in the deepest sense, an icon of the satiation of Christ’s Thirst.
Prayer: Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the Thirst of Christ so permeated your soul that you experienced His longing within the depths of your being. This Thirst drove you to charity, endlessly searching for every way possible to bring satiation to our Lord in the distressing disguise of the poor and suffering. Please pray for me, that I will be freed of every selfish motivation in life so that I can give myself to others, freely and wholeheartedly, as an instrument of the Most Merciful Heart of Jesus. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You.
