Mother Teresa was no novelty to me. The reverend mother of the convent where I went to school spoke in that same humble murmur with its slight tang of reproach. She, too, was considered so holy that she did not have to deal with the frustrations of every day. Such living saints make doing good look easy when it is all but impossible. Who can give and never count the cost. If your savings account is in heaven and you are interested above all in accumulating sanctifying grace, there is no cost. For the rest of us, unblessed with this celestial accounting system, the cost of bringing up a damaged child, of guiding a bewildered and protesting parent toward death, of enduring hardship, humiliation and injustice, is crippling. And we pay it, day in day out, with no paparazzi to record the thousands of tiny triumphs over tiredness or exasperation or despair.
Compared to the aged husband I saw not long ago gently bottoning his agitated wife into her overcoat, Mother Teresa had a terrific life, jet-setting hither and yon, basking in the glow of universal approbation, rushing in where more thoughtful charity workers feared to tread, grabbing the headlines and the loot, $30 million a year. Well could she say that Christ’s yoke was easy and his burden light, especially as she never had to consider anyone else’s priorities. Abortion was out–even if you were Bengali and had been raped by a Pakistani soldier in the genocidal war of 1972.
This week the Vatican aired an interview with the saint in which she talked about her reception in heaven. Oh, yes, Saint Peter would recognize her. What would he say to her? Her reply is a gift to the Promoter of the Faith, once known as the Devil’s Advocate, who will have to oppose her beatification. Unblushing, she replied, “He will say, ‘But what have you done, Mother Teresa, filling up Paradise with all your poor people?’” Before the media ruled, charismatic Catholics were controlled by their confessors, who protected them against such vainglory by imposing mortifications of the spirit.
Living saints drain their holiness from the rest of us. Time and again the mourners for Diana and Mother Teresa will say, “Nobody cares, but she cared.” This is not only untrue in the rich world but also in India. Begging can only be a huge industry in India because people give. A sannyasi can walk from one end of the Subcontinent to the other, with nothing but a loindoth, his staff and a begging bowl, because people will share what little they have with him. In the shabby lanes of urban Bombay at suppertime you may see scores of poor men sitting on the pavements outside restaurants waiting for their free meal of rice and dahl, cooked for them by the restaurant, paid for by a client.
Much as she has tried to show that the poor need missionary charity elsewhere, Mother Teresa is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Part of the general veneration for her stems from a conviction that only a saint could bear to live in such a hideous place. The fact that her principal work was caring for the dying has reinforced the impression held by people who have never been there that Calcutta is a charnel house. If the cult of Christian Mother Teresa is fed by contempt for Hindu India, it must do more evil than good. However many people are helped by Mother Teresa and her nuns, there are close to a billion others who will continue to be unfairly judged as unable or unwilling to take care of their own.
