I'm a bit late to the party that happened this weekend, but I'd like to stick my oar in too if that's alright. To be clear I'm not speaking about Labour Day or its various parades and personalities, but rather the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Her sainthood has been decades in the making, and now that it has been condoned by the Holy See, her name can be invoked officially by those who make service to the poor, sick, and orphaned their vocation.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was not born in India, where she founded her order and worked for years. She was born in Albania in 1910; by the end of her life, the various godless, anti-religious ideologies of the world had created more orphans, widows, maimed, sick, and poor than perhaps at any other time in history. Into this suffering, she sought to bring love and care daily through humble acts of charity by feeding, clothing, and helping those in need.
Mother Teresa did not seek the spotlight. Though she won several awards and became a household name for comedians and presidents alike, she never stopped advocating for those she served in Calcutta and for the underprivileged generally. Her message was the same wherever she went - she truly believed that she was serving Christ disguised as the poor. Her advice to those wondering how to help those in need was simple - "give until it hurts."
You can learn more about her work and achievements elsewhere, but one last detail ought to be mentioned: she had doubts. As her biography, Come Be My Light, clearly states, she went through years of silence from the Almighty, and even as she did continue to help those in need, she had doubts about the soul, God, and other major parts of her Catholic faith.
This fact ought to be more widely known, given how much it humanizes her. And while I'm no theologian, I believe that the lesson to be learned from this is simple: when in total darkness, trust your compass to lead you home. Mother Teresa's vocation was to help the poor, and while she could not see the divine light at all times, she continued to do what was right. In short, she kept the faith, even when she couldn't reason why. She persevered by a strength that made her holy.
Thousands turned out for her canonization, and millions more will invoke her name for help as many have already done for years. Truly Mother Teresa, as Pope Francis says she will be called, is a real life model of how we ought to treat our fellow human beings. One can only hope that more of us take up her cross and make our dark world a brighter place.
