Manageable pieces

While she was alive, Mother Teresa became known around the world for her work with the poorest of the poor, first in urban centres in India and then increasingly in other parts of the world. She was so well respected and revered that when she died she was accorded the equivalent of a state funeral in India and the Church wasted little time in opening her cause for canonization.

How does one become so respected and looked up to? In her case, she always said that she began her work with the poor one person at a time.

When Sister Teresa heard the call of God to leave her teaching position with the Loreto Sisters, she was initially filled with fear about leaving the familiar surroundings in which she had lived for so many years, but this call would not go away, so she eventually made the bold move to walk outside the walls of the convent, and to begin a new chapter in her life.

Sometimes we too face potentially life-changing decisions, and we can easily become overwhelmed by the myriad implications of such decisions. Perhaps we don't face the crowds of the Calcutta streets, but such moments can and often do make us feel very much like Jonah who was invited to enter the city of Nineveh (a biblical metropol): a daunting task, to be sure.

Like Jonah, Mother Teresa also faced her fear head on, and tackled the task not by considering its magnitude, but by viewing it in small, manageable chunks. According to her, she could not face the crushing opression of poverty that was all around her, not on her own, but she could show compassion to one person at a time. In so doing, she managed to make a difference, and others who saw her tenacity and believed that she was indeed doing something good, followed in her footsteps. They are still following, in incredible numbers: proof that there was and is a valid need for such compassion, and that the work is effective.