Now that Mother Teresa is “Saint Teresa of Kolkata”, many will find it hard to substitute “mother” with “saint”. But, good mothers are saints; saints are good mothers; and you and I have immense capacity to be mother-and-saint. Church authorities have validated two miracles to “prove” that Mother Teresa is truly in heaven and that through her intercession miracles have taken place. But, diminutive Teresa’s biggest miracle is her “being” mother.
Paraphrasing the World Social Forum’s slogan, “Another world is possible,” a friend opined: “a mother-world is possible”. In today’s macho-world driven by love of power, cutthroat competition and contempt of weakness, Saint Teresa made a mother-world possible with the power of love, fertile collaboration and sensitive handling of weaknesses to turn them into strengths.
Mothering is not merely the responsibility of mothers but of all men and women. While most women naturally take to physiological, psychological, spiritual and practical mothering, men find it harder, since being kind, tender, caring, sensitive and forgiving is likely to be pooh-poohed among males as symptomatic of weakness or effeminacy. But, psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s views of anima and animus hint on how to integrate the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses or the masculine ones possessed by a woman, respectively.
Nurturing the “other gender archetype” dormant within oneself demands integrating lights and shadows, anima and animus into a harmonious and whole “self”. Mother Teresa’s posthumously published Come, Be My Light private writings shocked many since the book revealed her prolonged periods of “darkness”.
Many questioned: can a saint really house deep darkness within? Was she masking her inner darkness with a deceptive smile and glowing face? Wouldn’t Mother’s writings stump her cause for canonisation? Apparently, they did not. At a first level of motherhood, Kolkata’s Saint Teresa was simply a powerhouse of love. Her love was, admittedly, an overflow of the deep love of God, manifest in an insatiable thirst to “be” more and love more like her “spouse”, Jesus. This love of God fructified in her viewing every human being — born or unborn — as a child of God and sister/brother of Jesus.
At a second level, Mother Teresa birthed fruitful collaborations among peoples of all creeds, classes, colours and cultures. Her ordinary human efforts effectively snowballed into movements of extraordinary proportion animated by universal love and compassion.
At a third level, she learnt to embrace her deepest feelings of “darkness” thereby transforming them into strengths through an unfaltering faith which believers of all religions admired. This week we celebrate three feasts: Teacher’s Day and Teresa’s Feast (September 5) and the birthday of Jesus’ mother, Mary (September 8), who was model to Saint Teresa. Let’s strive to be mothers-and-saints, too, making mother-worlds possible.
