By Jonas Kerketta
Edmund Burke has aptly said, “Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” Or as Gilbert West highlights, “Example is a lesson that all men can read.” Each year India celebrates Teachers’ Day on 5 September, the birth day of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India’s second President and an erudite philosopher and educationist. Teachers’ Day 2016 will see another great teacher on India’s, nay, on the world’s educational horizon, St. Teresa of Kolkata, who taught in the ‘global classroom’ through her exemplary life. She continues to do so, through her Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, who, spread across 133 countries, are imparting practical lessons in loving service to the countless victims of neglect and indifference.
Mother Teresa was a member of the Loreto Sisters from 25 May 1931. On 10 September 1946, on her train journey from Kolkata to Darjeeling she received from God the “Inspiration” or special message involving a “call within a call”. Till then she had been principal of St. Mary’s School at Entally, Kolkata, and had taught History and Geography in that school run by the Loreto Sisters.
Her “call within call”, demanded her to leave the Loreto Congregation and to dedicate herself to serve the “poorest of the poor”. After patient waiting and requests she received official permission from Archbishop Ferdinand Perrier of Kolkata in January 1948 to leave her first religious “call”. Dressed in white, blue-bordered sari she left the portals of her beloved Loreto Convent on 17 August 1948 to enter world of the poor.
After a short medical course in the Holy Family Convent Hospital in Patna, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta and found temporary lodging with the Little Sisters of the Poor. On 21 December the 38 year old ex-Loreto nun ventured into the slums for the first time. Children started crowding around her. Without a classroom, desks, chalkboard, paper and other requirements, she began her first class for the slum children by scribbling alphabets on the wet ground.
What were her academic qualifications? Besides her schooling and nine years of teaching experience as well as brief medical course in Patna, she had no qualifications in health care or social work. But she could speak fluently five languages and was a great communicator. What urged her on to venture into the uncharted arena was the clear invitation of God, “Come be my light” which she received in the afore-mentioned “Inspiration”. Since then she spared no efforts in bringing light and joy in the life of suffering millions all over the globe while herself suffering her doubts or the so-called “dark night of the soul” for over 50 long years.
Mother Teresa was not a scholar in the common parlance of the day but her few books such as, Life in the Spirit (1983), A Simple Path (1995), In My Own Words (1996), and No Greater Love (1997) do serve to reveal her deep spirituality as well as her practical wisdom.
Through her practical words and actions she teaches the greatness of little things, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love”. Much before the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai could say, “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”, Mother Teresa had confirmed the importance of doing things humbly and gradually, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one”.
The great scientist Albert Einstein did not claim all the credit in bringing transformation in others, “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” Mother Teresa in her humility attributes all good actions to God, “I am only an instrument in the hands of God”. In relation to the magnitude of the problem facing the poor of the world, she considers her work insignificant though useful, “…what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” She recommended the practice of the virtue of humility which she considers the “mother of all virtues.”
Alfred Mercier underscores the importance of doing things joyfully, “What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” Mother Teresa too highlights the value of serving others joyfully, “…The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it”. How similar it is to what the Bible says, “Each one should give, then as he has decided…for God loves a cheerful giver” (2Cor.9:7).
Mother Teresa had a profound respect for human life, even of unborn babes. In the 1971 war between East and West Pakistans an estimated 200,000 women were raped. Some women committed suicide. Many wanted to abort their babies. Mother Teresa begged them to have their babies and give them to her, “The Sisters will take care of you, and we will find a good home for the babies” (Maryanne Raphael,What Mother Teresa Taught Me, 2007, p.87).
Rightly does Ken Blanchard tell teachers, “Your role as a leader is even more important than you might imagine. You have the power to help people become winners.” Mother Teresa and her Sisters have helped over 22,000 people to die dignified deaths (Maryanne, p. 136). She has even made discarded children into winners. For instance, Gautam, a polio-stricken orphan was abandoned at the age of two. Mother Teresa picked him up and cared for him in Shishu Bhavan, Kolkata. He was later given to Dr. Patricia Lewis. Today Gautam Lewis is a successful entrepreneur and a flight instructor in London.
The examples of Mother imparting precious lessons through concrete actions in the global arena, are innumerable. And the impact of her example has inspired thousands of Sisters, Brothers, Priests and lay coworkers to join hands and carry on her work for the “poorest of the poo.” She has inspired even a left-winged agnostic, Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist of international fame to embrace Catholic Church in 1982 with his wife Kitty and to produce a film on her and her work entitled Something Beautiful for God as well as to pen a book with the same heading.
Mother Teresa loved and served the poor and taught valuable lessons to mankind because she saw God in suffering humanity. On receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1979, she said, “We are not social workers. We are contemplatives in the world touching the body of Christ 24 hours.” And on his part Jesus has emphatically promised, “For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ by no means will lose the reward” (Mk 9:41). Mother Teresa has been given 124 national and international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1979. The official conferring of Sainthood by Pope Francis in the name of the universal Catholic Church is a fitting gift to this humble but profoundly edifying teacher around the occasion of Teachers’ Day 2016.
Longfellow in his A Psalm of Life says, “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.” May the “Saint of the gutter”, now christened ‘St. Teresa of Kolkata’, inspire today’s mankind to leave behind footprints for future generations to follow.
( Jonas Kerketta sdb, Bosco B.Ed. College, Dimapur, (m) 09436062842, Email [email protected])