The Thoughts of the ‘Saint of the
Gutters’ Who Dedicated Her Life To The Poor

CALCUTTA,
INDIA – (ANS)- The other day, a friend asked me which of the
thousands of interviews I have done over the years had impacted me the most.
That was an easy one to answer. It was with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the
“Saint of the Gutters.”

It took place in 1975 after I had
received a phone call at my London, England, newspaper office, asking if I
would be free to fly to India to interview a lady called Mother Teresa at her
headquarters in the Missionaries of Charity home in central Calcutta.

I had first become aware of Mother
Teresa after viewing “Something Beautiful for God”, an inspiring BBC
TV documentary made in 1970 by British journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, who had
gone to Calcutta to film her work. Having been an agnostic up until then, the
experience turned his life around and he became a follower of Jesus Christ and
was soon affectionately called “St. Mugg” by the British media.

But back to 1975. Mother Teresa’s
words still live with me today and so, as we reflect on our present world of
pain and suffering, I thought I would share with you my meeting with this
extraordinary woman who was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (AG-nes GOHN-jah
BOY-yah-jee-oo) in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. Her family was of
Albanian descent. She certainly did a huge amount to alleviate the pain and
suffering of her time.

At the age of twelve, she felt
strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the
love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and
joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in
India. After a few months’ training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on
May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun.

From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa
taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she
glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in
1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and
devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of
Calcutta.

Although she had no funds, she
depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum
children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was
also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her
work.

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa
received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, “The
Missionaries of Charity”, whose primary task was to love and care for
those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an
International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

A giant to the have-nots of life

When Mother Teresa first came into
the tiny room where we were to conduct the interview, I soon realized that that
although she was small in stature — she stood only 4-foot-11-inches tall –
she was a giant to the have-nots of life that she ministered to during her six
decades on the subcontinent of India, as well as others around the world. Her
friends were the starving, the dying, the poor.

As a young reporter, I immediately
warmed to this gentle woman who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for she
had seen more poverty than anyone I had ever met. Speaking in the founding,
festering slum where she made her simple home, I was surprised to hear her
express pity for the “poverty-stricken West.”

“The spiritual poverty of the
Western World is much greater than the physical poverty of our people,”
she told me, as the fan whirred above us, trying to alleviate the unbearable
heat of that Indian city.

Emptiness

“You, in the West, have
millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel
unloved and unwanted. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but
they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet
they don’t know what it is.

“What they are missing, really,
is a living relationship with God.”

Mother Teresa cited the case of a
woman who died alone in her home in Australia. Her body lay for weeks before
being found. The cats were actually eating her flesh when the body was
discovered. “To me, any country which allows a thing like that to happen
is the poorest. And people who allow that are committing pure murder. “Our
poor people would never allow it.”

And the teeming millions of the poor
of the Third World have a lesson to teach us in the affluent West, Mother
Teresa declared.

“They can teach us
contentment,” she said, her leathery face gently smiling. “That is
something you don’t have much of in the West.

“I’ll give you an example of
what happened to me recently. I went out with my sisters in Calcutta to seek
out the sick and dying.

Gratitude

“We picked up about 40 people
that day. One woman, covered in a dirty cloth, was very ill and I could see it.
So I just held her thin hand and tried to comfort her. She smiled weakly at me
and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then she died. She was more concerned to give to me than
to receive from me. I put myself in her place and I thought what I would have
done. I am sure I would have said, ‘I am dying, I am hungry, call a doctor,
call a Father, call somebody.’ But what she did was so beautiful. I have never
seen a smile like that. It was just perfect. It was just a heavenly gift. That
woman was more concerned with me than I was with her.”

Starving

Mother Teresa, who had a wonderful
way of making you feel you were the most important person in the world when you
were talking to her, told me of another incident.

“I gave another poor woman
living on the streets a bowl of rice,” said Mother Teresa. “The woman
was obviously starving and she looked in wonder as I handed it to her.
“She told me, ‘It is so long since I have eaten.’

“About one hour later, she
died. But she did not say, ‘Why hasn’t God given me food to eat,’ and ‘why has
my life been so bad?’

“The torture of hunger and pain
just finished her, but she didn’t blame anybody for it. This is the greatness
of our poor people.”

Mother Teresa added: “We owe a
great debt of gratitude to those who are suffering so beautifully. They teach
us so much.”

She also told of her battle against
abortion in Calcutta. “We have sent word to clinics, hospitals and police
stations, not to destroy babies, but to send them to us and we will give them
to families who want them.

“At birth, we arrange for
adoption also to foreign countries, as well as in India.”

And she had harsh words for
abortionists. “Life is a God-given gift and who has the right to destroy
life?” she said. “God’s life is in that human body.

“I believe abortion is a reason
why there is so much trouble in the world today. People have ceased loving God,
and they think they can do without Him.”

When I flushed as I asked Mother
Teresa her age at that time, she told me: “There is no need to be
embarrassed. I’m 64.”

She added with a twinkle in her eye:
“I’m getting old now aren’t I? But it’s a wonderful thing to be able to
spend all those years doing something beautiful for God.”

This incredible Catholic nun,
revered for her tireless dedication to the world’s most wretched, died on
Friday, September 5, 1997 surrounded by grieving sisters of her order. She was
87 and she left this earth having done many “beautiful things” for
God. What an example she was to all of us and that was the one interview I will
never forget!

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About Dan Wooding

Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 46 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST
(Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service
(ANS).

Wooding was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding also a regular contributor to The Weekend Stand on the Crawford Broadcasting Network, and a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries. He is the author of some 43 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books.

To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, also recently released “God’s Ambassadors in Japan” which is available at amazon.com.

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