P.A.Chacko S.J
She was courageous. A peep out of the secure Loreto convent walls said it all. It brought to her sights and sounds of human beings in the underbelly of Calcutta’s dark and dingy alleys and slums.
She felt her feet sagging, her heart throbbing faster, and her vision getting blurred and turing into blanket darkness.
That was Teresa the nun living a secure life in the convent. She rushed to the chapel with a disturbed mind. She knelt on the front pew looking intent at the crucifix. She had no words welling up in her heart or coming out of her lips. She was confused! She looked at the crucified Jesus. Intently, without batting an eyelid, as it were. Her eyes popped up as if with a searching question, ‘WHY?’
Nothing more.
She thought Jesus had the answer. A long time passed. A silent exchange. She felt Jesus was looking at her searching heart.
It was a contemplation of agony. Suddenly, a sharp pang like a stab went through her heart with lightning speed. She heard a soft murmur, ‘Go out and meet me in my people out there.’
She looked at Jesus. Jesus was no longer looking at her. His eyes were downcast. He had said it all.
Teresa said the short Trinitarian prayer, Glory be to the Father….
That night she could not sleep. Horror scenes , groans and wails of famished babies, streams of lepers and beggars rubbing shoulders and the like. As if in fright, Teresa cried aloud, Oh my God!
The next morning she decided to take a stand. Move out of this security and merge with the insecure. She got the required permission.
Next we see her pulling out a rat infested human being from a dumpheap. She looked for a shelter, a verandah. As if by miracle, she managed to find it in the Hindu Kali temple.
From then on, no turning back. It was a race against time. The skeletal and tiny figure that she was, she took determined steps and merged into the nameless and faceless crowd living left out and defenceless.
The rest is history. Today she is revered as a saint not for opening convents worldwide, but for taking a stand with the lost and the least in society and thereby stirring the conscience of the world.
Teresa was not a preacher. But her deeds spoke more than words. She was the unrecognized prophet who had a message to the world that companionship with the downtrodden was urgent and unquestionable. That the poor and abandoned are human beings and have a humanity that should not be stolen by the powerful or by the forces that have no conscience.
May her tribe increase!