The 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 5, 2021

The Feast Day of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

James 2:1–5

My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Sit here, please,” while you say to the poor one, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?  Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him? 

The Letter of St. James provides us with a window through which we can see the Church at Jerusalem during the first years after our Lord’s Ascent into heaven.  Throughout his Letter, St. James (the son of Alphaeus, not the son of Zebedee who had been martyred years before) emphasizes traditional Jewish moral concerns, such as the care of the poor.  We see this concern for those in poverty and their dignity as the same as the rich throughout the Old Testament, especially in the books of wisdom: “One is as it were rich, when he has nothing; and another is as it were poor, when he has great riches” (Proverbs 13, 17); “He that has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord: and he will repay him” (Proverbs 19, 17).  In the care of the poor we imitate the Lord, before whom we are all destitute, who cares for us, to the point of sending his Som to die for us.

We do not celebrate the Feast Day of Mother Teresa today because of it falling on a Sunday, but we ought to remember her and read the words that she has left us, many of which are collected in books.  Her Letter to the Third International Conference on Women in Beijing is particularly worth reading in light of the confusion troubling western society today.  A deep humility based on her faith in God formed the basis of Mother Teresa’s character and work.  I recall an occasion when she visited her hospice for AIDS patients in D.C., the Gift of Peace, how this famed Nobel Prize winner hid from the sisters showing her around, causing panic, only to jump out of a closet and shouting, “Boo!”  Or the time when she met with a group of seminarians after a Mass in Rockville, Maryland in which she had received solemn vows of a new class of sisters.  She wanted to know the name of each one seminarian, and each came forward to meet her and shake her hand.  She was very lively, like a little girl, although she was 85 at the time.  When two newly ordained priests came by and asked her if they could give her their first blessing, her mouth fell open and her eyes widened as though she had just won the lottery.  She dropped to her arthritic-ridden knees, bowed her head, and put her hands together.  For all the world, she looked like a girl receiving her First Holy Communion.  After the blessings, she hopped up again and brightened the room with her smile.

When she talked to the sick and the dying at the Gift of Peace, she was careful to touch the person before her, to hold a hand or to put her hand on a shoulder or on the side of a face.  She looked into the person’s eyes with deep sympathy in her own and she spoke to each as though this was her child.  And there was a sort of aura about her — an aura of holiness — that could be felt quite palpably.  The simple act of her entering a church in which my father sat led to his return to the Faith.  He felt something he had never felt before happen within him as she processed down the church’s main aisle.  Her great faith, which led to her holy humility, which led to her work with the very poorest people on earth, continues to show us how we ought to treat one another: not as obstacles or assistants, but as children of God.