- CROP Walk October 6th
- Death Cafe September 21st at 4pm
- Watch for Harvest Supper date to be announced
Watch the video HERE
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” -Saint Teresa of Calcutta
We all begin as somebody not so very special or exciting. At the same time, we all begin as somebody so very special and exciting. We are all born with a Light. A divine light that shines from within. Saint/Mother Teresa is celebrated this week. We celebrate her life, her work, and her legacy.
She began her life as an ordinary girl named Agnes. She was twelve that first she heard God’s Call. God calls us all in so many different ways. She was called to missionary work and spent the next six years preparing. She learned about missionary work and missionaries. She studied the geography of the world. She didn’t leap into the world at God’s Call…most of us don’t…we are called and there is a lot of boring and unnoticed background work. There is preparation and study…and a little bit (or a lot) of doubt and uncertainty.
At eighteen, Agnes joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. She learned to be a teacher and joined the missionary work in Calcutta. In 1937, at 27, she took on the name of Teresa, after the other beautiful Saint Teresa.
She taught for year and she loved it. It was her Good Work. It was her Call.
In 1946, she felt another Call. The Call from Jesus who said to her: “Come be my light.” He called on her to love, not just the poor, but the lowest and the least. The unwanted and the uncared for. She said that it was as if Jesus felt this incredible separation from this world and those who needed tending and he felt this incredible longing to be present. Separation and Longing. He called upon her to be his hands in this world.
In 1950, Theresa dropped her habit and replaced it with a poor woman’s sari and stepped into the slums of Calcutta to be with the poorest of the poor. There, she began her greatest work. Feeding the poor. Washing the sick. Holding the dying. Tending the starving.
Come be my Light. We are not always called to do easy things or live easy lives. We are called to be Lights in this world. Seeing and being lights in the darkness is the greatest thing we can give to ourselves and one another. Teresa saw the light and face of Jesus in every poor person before her…the cranky, the irritable, the pain-filled, the angry, the bitter, the pitiful…even when it was challenging to do so.
Teresa’s work grew and she drew in brothers and sisters in this Work. She crossed faiths and nationalities. She listened to the call and became a beacon and inspiration of light, because as she would say:
“God still loves the world today.” We are the light and love of that world.
Love often comes across as this tiny, delicate word, but Love is enormous and tough. It’s really, really tough. It is that tough work that God calls us to do in this world. It is the only way we can mend the broken pieces of a world God still loves.
In the same way we often forget the long, boring work that goes into “becoming”—all those years of study and learning before Agnes would became the woman who would become Mother Teresa. We also often forget that we are humans who are fallible and frightened and unsure. We avoid those painful places, but it is often out of those painful, dark places that the person we are to become unfolds from.
One of the things we might not know of is Teresa’s own “Dark Night of the Soul”. She called it the “painful night”. When she felt terribly lost and alone. When she could not feel her connection to God (Grace) and Jesus. When she felt complete separation from God and a deep, deep longing to be connected.
This “painful night” might echo in the isolation and interior desolation of the poor she was called to help. People who feel unseen and separated from their fellow human beings. People who long to simply…belong.
Separation and longing is definitely part of the human experience. Perhaps it is also a part of the spiritual experience. The dark night of the soul. The painful night. Teresa felt this longing and separation in her personal experiences with Jesus and God. Teresa in her visions, Jesus’s separation from his people and his longing to help.
This interior life and struggle is a part of so many spiritual journeys. We see it in so many of the stories. It is the interior life and struggle that is a part of our own lives. We, too, can feel isolated and separate. From God. From one another. From the earth.
Perhaps, this is part of the Passion of Christ. Christ on the Cross is the loss and separation that creates the longing. PAUSE. We long for Christ and God. Christ and God longs for us. God needs us. We need God. Perhaps the moment we take Christ off the Cross, and into our own lives, is the moment of the bringing of Compassion into the world. We are no longer paralyzed by the pain and the dark nights, but use it to walk with Grace and in the Way of Jesus in our lives.
We become the bridge and as we bridge the gaps between one another, perhaps we are also bridge the gap between God and the world. We bridge all these places of longing and separation.
We bring light into the darkness and pain. And light gets into the dark creaks and heals the wounds of the world. Light spreads and keeps on spreading. There’s no putting out the light once is has been awakened. Maybe it feels dim and dusty, but it doesn’t go away.
It’s easy to turn the saints into something more than struggling humans, like us. To separate them as “better” or “special” and to long to be that better or special ourselves (or fear to be that better or special). When we do that, we lose sight of the most important thing…Love and bridging the places where it seems like there is separation. To reach out to one another. As Teresa says:
“Holiness is not a luxury of the few, it is a simple duty for each one of us.”
We are all meant to bridge the gaps where there is separation. We are all meant to shine lights in the dark places. We are all meant to be a balm for the pain of one another. We are all meant to Love one another. This is the deepest of Compassion and this is what happens when we take Christ off the Cross and bring The Way of Jesus into our lives. To begin buildings bridges where there is separation and longing.
We are all Called…one way or another. In small and in big ways…we all matter and it is up to all of us to bridge and mend the broken pieces of the world…perhaps, starting with the wounds right before us.
In 1979, Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 1997 and in 2016, she became Saint Teresa. All of this began with a little girl named Agnes who listened to a Call to help the world. It began with a woman who struggled through to her own painful and dark nights to listen to the hope in her heart that came out of intense feelings of longing and separation. It came from a strong soul who knew she needed to bridge her own fears and pain because she was needed in this world.
Teresa, saints, and good people are here to remind us and inspire us when we fall into our own dark and painful nights. They are here to remind us that we are not alone and that we are here for something bigger than just ourselves. We are here for one another. We are here for Grace.
Teresa inspires us toward unshakable faith, invincible hope, and incredible light and awesome love!
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 