Annual Back-to-School Message from The Catalyst Pioneer:
.: Mother Teresa: The Smile of Calcutta :.
First Saint Day of Blessed Mother Teresa
This way, every family can discover, foster and nurture learning and a better understanding of this Great Lady's Life (and also understand, she, like us, washuman folks...but also, increasingly a rarity--she was also humane.) and celebrate for and with their own Domestic Churches.
I also recommend watching, The Letters starring Juillet Lewis and it's FREE at the moment on Roku's Netflix's or Netflix's Account. You may remember that Marco & I first saw it on a Date Night last November at The Bowtie Theatre here in Richmond City. It's another simple way to celebrate her life and legacy!
Encourage your own children, grandchildren, youth groups, religious ed groups or CCD or Children's Liturgy of the Word to find out why Mother Teresa is called "The Smile of Calcutta" by other cultures and societies from the United States? Do you know?
- Encourage a Mother Teresa Challenge as your birthday gift this year to Mother Teresa and a gift in honour of her First Saint Day:
So, perhaps, we will challenge our children, now adolescents on the precipice of young adults now to give away another ten beautiful, dazzling, heavenly, Saintly Smiles in honour of the Sainthood of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the day before her birthday. Be on the lookout for a Mother Teresa smile from this family all weekend long. Maybe we have our own secret "IceBucket Challenge" going around here! Stay tuned. But, here's just one of many reasons why The Smile of Calcutta got to me (Marco & I were 'official marriage mentors; now, we are just 'unofficial at the moment, and we feel we get a lot more accomplished with couples and families with our new status at the moment. So, here's one genesis of The Smile:
One Time while attending a meeting, Mother Teresa was asked to give a little inspirational message. She stood up and looked out at the group and simply said
"Husbands should smile at their wives and wives should smile at their husbands and children. "
Someone (misunderstanding, misinformed, not fully formed in their thought process, mindful or genuine ignorance asking to be informed in a loving way) wondered how she could give this advice and asked her,
"Are you Married?"
She replied that she certainly was married (I'm almost certain this inquiry must have been from a non-Catholic) ......
married to Jesus...
and sometimes she found it difficult to smile at Jesus because he could be so demanding! (haven't we all felt at some point that our spouses and progeny are a bit too much to deal with. So, too, did Mother Teresa! Rest Assured! We are never alone in our sacrifices & suffering, no matter how trivial or great!)
.: Mother Teresa: The Smile of Calcutta :.
"Love Begins at home, love lives in homes and that is why there is so much suffering and so much unhappiness in the world today, because there is so little love in the homes and in family life...If we are to bring that love again, we have to begin at home. We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly."
--Mother Teresa of Calcutta
For those of us in our Domestic Churches, and I include each and every one of you in the above-referenced quote, we know quite well what it meant to us to grow up in a loving home or not. For some it was perhaps the lack of that love, that forged future, deep meaning for you in crafty your domestic church of today and tomorrow; for others, it was huge respect and responsibility andweight, heft, if you will, that you give the above quote honor in your home as a perhaps, unspoken, mission statement in your dc.
We know the meaning of what it means to serve. As Catholic Christians we should have been taught that; for some, sadly they never got the instruction, for others it went over their heads, and we should have corrected that. For others it is not yet their intention.
But, if we, if you and I, friend and neighbor, are indeed to bring LOVE back to our world, whatever world that means for you and yours, we must, we simply must make our homes centers of compassion and forgiveness and grace and mercy. We simply must. No matter where we work or where we play or where we educate or where we worship or where we vote, we simply must. Our Father Calls Us to Do So. And Saint Teresa will call us all to smile while doing even the most simple, of simple, ordinary things. It is our Duty. It is our difference, perhaps even as Catholic Christians. In the words sung by that of a returned Catholic, my personal friend and Sophie Dulog's, too, Sarah McLachlin, "It's an Ordinary Miracle. Everyday." Written by someone else; sung with simple eloquence by her.
For those of you who know me well, you may recall my first family and I have a special, unique relationship to Blessed Mother Teresa: she attended the Loreto Sisters Convent, the same institution that my maternal mother attended in Dublin, Ireland until the late 1950s. While my mother was young (born in 1936 and moved with her family briefly to Woodstock, Canada & PEI just before and during the outbreak of WWII because of employment opportunities for her architect father, my grandfather) she returned to Dublin for her schooling and even when she left out of Loreto Convent the footsteps and the footprints of the little girl from Skopje (modern day Macedonia) were all over the place even then. My mother passed decades before Mother Teresa , but looking back, I suppose I was blessed with knowing about and of Mother Teresa decades before the rest of the world got to really know her because of my original domestic church.
My association with Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity, was in fact, my primary motivation to go to India, Pakistan and the Punjab (the annexed part of the Indian-Paki border) for my year abroad studies with the University of Virginia in 1982 - 1983. (Especially after I didn't get the plum assignment of going back to Paris, France! or even Germany or Russia!). What a disappointment at first.
Reflecting back now on that decision, I often wonder, "Was it God's handprint for me to bend to his will in the natural, holy selection of my own husband and eventually my family." I doubt very seriously that this country/city lass would have ever moved to Gotham City, Sin City (New York City) on her own without her mother (My mother had died by then) or ever entertained the thought of accepting a courtship with Mr. Dulog, let alone, say, "Yes" to God's call to motherhood. And, I know that I would not have had the strength in this last decade to move through this marvelous journey of earthly life without the teachings, reflections, writing, musings, prayer life of the Blessed Mother Teresa and her Sisters. Or to rest simply at home after almost four decades of work and travel and positions of power and authority. It is still hard. To serve, simply.
What are your reflections of Mother Teresa in your own life? In your journey as a woman, as a daughter, or wife, or mother or co-worker or employee? Or, if you are a man, as those other roles. Most especially as a human being. Because the word is out that humanity is on the decrease. I'd love to hear from you. Perhaps, I've inspired you or encouraged you to dig a lot deeper into your own spiritual life and discern and discover something new for yourself. I certainly hope so. And, maybe that's personal and too close for you to share at the moment. So, someday. Maybe. Maybe this is the first time you have even been challenged or encouraged to consider another side of you. And, that, perhaps is the greatest gift of all that you can give yourself today!
Finally, I would like to share with you on a personal, spiritual level that I would never have gotten through our first year of education at home if I had not dedicated that year 2011 - 2012 to Mother Teresa's quote:
"Do Ordinary Things with extraordinary Love"
For me, she didn't need to be an earthly saint; for me, she already was a Saint.
I know that I got through that year in the palm of another great woman just doing ordinary things with the only thing I had left to me and mine...LOVE!
I can not believe that five years have flown by and so much has happened since I first took my own personal pledge. I can clearly remember the pledge in the pew where it all happened. And, in 2011, it was only just being revealed, the writings, diaries, and thoughts of Mother Teresa's own inner dialogues and struggles, too. It is almost surreal to me now. I was loved and taken care of and nurtured not by neighbors, family and friends, but as quite often happens, in the work of God, by others. Prayers answered. I do, so love a full-circle moment.
"Because we cannot see Christ we cannot express our love to Him, but our neighbors we can always see, and we can do to them what, if we saw him, we would like to do to Christ."
--Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Perhaps the operative phrase here from Mother Teresa was, "...if we saw him." Perhaps we can all celebrate anew the beginning of seeing Christ--even if for some of us--the first time, in our neighbors. Smile. Know what St. Teresa knows already: The World Changes. Because You Changed.
So you know our family and our domestic church will most positively be celebrating this week the Sainthood of Mother Teresa! It's personal.
After writing this Post, I wish that our church, or our parish or our Diocese had made so much more out of Blessed Mother Teresa's canonization and her Celebration of her First Year of Sainthood--her First Day as a Saint. After all this, doesn't it seem such a natural, perfect, God-designed plan to have her birth, her death and her Canonization, Sainthood, perfectly timed and wrapped up in all the Back-to-School Season for America! Surely a GIFT. A GIFT! A Gift for us, like the Fruits of the Spirit and the Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy and the Beatitudes all in one earthly form--Mother Teresa! Something to truly celebrate as we enter our Autumn Ember Days in both the church and our culture, often a culture of malcontent and toxicity. Don't let it happen! Celebrate the Goodness of all God's Gifts!
Those of us lucky enough to have met Mother Teresa when she was living felt her energy, her passion, her devotion, her disciple, her commitment to her calling in her own earthly life. You would know what I am speaking about. I have since met many people, laypeople and clergy who have indeed, met her, and they speak of the same je n'sais quoi factor that I allude to. It is only astounding to us. It was only much later, after her death, that we read or read her original diaries for ourselves, that like us, she struggled, too. She sacrificed, too. She suffered, too. And, not always, according to her with the Grace & Mercy that others felt from her. Her own interior life in many ways, may have been very much like our own, and certainly, not perfect or even perfectly or simply balanced. It is yet again, another of our own miracles. And, I in good, Great Faith, pass it along to you and your own Domestic Church. There is absolutely no reason why you can't Celebrate this week, this weekend, and again on September 4 and 5 (Mother Teresa's Birthday!) in honour of a Life, well-lived, well-loved, and well-used with a [future] legacy of all of our peaceful, healthy, happy futures both here and in Heaven!
And, this Rogue of the Church (Me!) perhaps challenges our church, parish, and Diocese and all our domestic churches to make this anniversary a more substantial commitment next year and in the years to come.
as always,
fondly in Our Faith,
Cheryl Ahern Dulog
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