"TAKE NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY . . . "

Homily for February 4^th, 2016: Mark 6:7-13.

          Sending out his disciples to proclaim the gospel, Jesus tells them: “Take nothing with you but a walking stick.” This lack of concern for material things shows the urgency of the missionary task, and the need to depend on God to supply whatever may be necessary. Could we do that?

          Let me tell you about someone who did. She was born in 1910 in what is now Albania and given the name Agnes in Baptism. As a girl she was told about missionaries in India and dreamed of joining them. A Jesuit told her that the Loretto nuns, based in Dublin, worked in India. At age 18 Agnes, not knowing a word of English, journeyed to Ireland to become a Sister of Loretto. She would never see her home, or her mother, again.

          After only 6 weeks in Dublin, Agnes arrived in Calcutta. When she took vows as a Sister she took the name of the French Carmelite, Teresa. For some 15 years she taught in the Loretto Sisters’ schools for Indian girls, becoming headmistress of a school for 300 pupils.

          In 1946 Sister Teresa was traveling by train to her annual retreat when she received what she called ever after “a call within a call: to give up all and follow Jesus into the slums, ministering to the poorest of the poor. I knew it was God’s will and that I had to follow him. It was an order. I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there.” Teresa exchanged her religious habit for the rough cotton sari of the poor, and went to live in a single room in the slums. Her only resources were 5 rupees, about a dollar. One by one former pupils joined her. They rose at 4:30, spent 2 hours in meditation and Mass, and then after a hurried breakfast set out for the slums, bearing baskets of food and medicines.

          Training her Sisters was a primary concern. They were not to be social workers, but contemplatives, able to see in the gravely ill and wretchedly poor, “Christ in his distressing disguise.”

          At Mother Teresa’s death in September 1997 almost 4000 women had joined Missionaries of Charity in houses all over the world, some here in St Louis. I invoke her prayers every day. I invite you to do the same, asking you to respond as I say: “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta – Pray for us.”