09/05/2026
Fifty years ago, Mother Teresa received the Poverello Award from Fr. Michael Scanlan TOR, president of the College (now Franciscan University) of Steubenville, with Bishop John King Mussio standing by. Thanks be to God!
Ten years ago, on September 4, 2016, the Church gathered in Rome as Pope Francis canonized Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Her life had already touched millions, but the Church officially confirmed what her life had proclaimed: this humble woman had allowed Christ to live and love through her.
Mother Teresa did not seek fame, wealth, power, or recognition. She sought only one thing: to love Jesus. And because she loved Jesus, she discovered Him in the poorest, the sickest, the dying, the abandoned, and the forgotten.
Mother Teresa took seriously the words of Jesus:
“Whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
She understood that the poor were not interruptions to her life; they were encounters with Christ.
When she washed the wounds of the sick, she touched Christ. When she fed the hungry, she fed Christ. When she embraced the rejected, she embraced Christ.
Her life teaches us that we cannot truly love Christ in the Eucharist while refusing to recognize Him in our neighbor.
The Jesus we receive at the altar is the same Jesus who waits for us outside these walls.
Mother Teresa reminds us that holiness does not necessarily mean doing spectacular things. It means doing ordinary things with extraordinary love.
We may never care for thousands of people in Calcutta, but we can care for the person God has placed before us.
We can forgive.
We can listen.
We can visit the lonely.
We can care for the elderly.
We can feed the hungry.
We can encourage someone who has lost hope.
The question is not, “What great thing can I do?”
The question is:
“What is Christ asking me to do with love today?”
Mother Teresa’s life also teaches us something profound about faith. She experienced periods of deep spiritual darkness and the painful feeling that God was distant. Yet she continued to pray, serve, receive the Eucharist, and love.
This reminds us that faith is not dependent upon feelings.
There will be moments when God seems silent. There will be prayers that appear unanswered and seasons when suffering makes us wonder where God is.
But the Cross teaches us that God’s silence is not God’s absence.
Jesus Himself cried from Calvary:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Yet the Father had not abandoned Him.
Mother Teresa teaches us: Stay with Jesus.
Stay when prayer is easy.
Stay when prayer is difficult.
Stay when you feel God’s presence.
Stay when you feel nothing.
Remain beneath the Cross, because resurrection follows the Cross.
The Church gives us the saints not merely to admire them, but to imitate them.
So today, Mother Teresa asks each of us:
Where is Jesus asking me to love Him?
Perhaps it is in your marriage.
Perhaps it is in your family.
Perhaps it is in someone who has hurt you.
Perhaps it is in someone who is lonely.
Perhaps it is in someone you have ignored.
There are people who are poor not only in money, but in companionship, hope, forgiveness, dignity, and love.
Mother Teresa would tell us: Do not wait for someone else to love them. Begin yourself.
The Eucharist was the heart of Mother Teresa’s life.
She understood that we come to Mass not simply to receive Jesus, but to be transformed by Him and sent forth to bring His love into the world.
The Mass continues when we forgive.
It continues when we serve.
It continues when we visit the lonely.
It continues whenever we choose love instead of selfishness.
The altar sends us into the world.
Ten years after her beatification, Mother Teresa’s message remains remarkably simple:
Love Jesus. See Jesus. Serve Jesus.
When you cannot do something great, do something small with great love.
When you cannot change the whole world, change the little corner of the world where God has placed you.
When you cannot understand what God is doing, trust Him.
And when the journey becomes difficult:
Stay with Jesus.
May Saint Teresa of Calcutta teach us to recognize Christ in every human person, especially the forgotten and suffering.
May she teach us to love without counting the cost, serve without seeking recognition, forgive without resentment, and remain faithful beneath the Cross.
And may we never be afraid to ask God for the grace to become saints—not famous saints, necessarily, but faithful saints in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.
Teach us to see Jesus.
Teach us to love Jesus.
Teach us to serve Jesus.
And teach us, every day, to do something beautiful for God.
H/t St. Jane Frances de Chantal Parish (adapted)
