‘A Saint With Her Feet on the Ground,’ Postulator Says

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Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., the postulator of the Cause for Beatification and Canonization of St. Teresa of Kolkata, said, “Mother is not only an admirable saint, she is an imitable saint.”

One can see that in the many examples of a life lived doing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy described in “A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve,” a just published book by St. Teresa. Father Kolodiejchuk edited the book and wrote its introduction.

“She was like a saint with her feet on the ground,” Father Kolodiejchuk said during an interview with CNY on Aug. 10.

He knew the future saint for 20 years—from 1977 until her death in 1997. “She was very aware that she was a simple human being in need of God’s mercy,” he said.

In addition to being the postulator of her cause—he was appointed to the post in 1999—Father Kolodiejchuk is the author of “Come, Be My Light,” the New York Times bestseller about St. Teresa’s “spiritual darkness,” and is also the director of the Mother Teresa Center.

St. Teresa was beatified in Rome in 2003 after 35,000 pages of documentation about her life and holiness were collected, along with the Vatican’s approval of the necessary miracle. In that case, it was the miraculous cancer cure of a 30-year old Indian woman named Monika Besra.

St. Teresa’s humility enabled her to suffer alongside, empathize with and be compassionate toward the unloved, uncared for and unwanted. “Part of her charism was to be identified with the poor,” Father Kolodiejchuk said. “Not only to taste the material poverty—she was really living that spiritual poverty.”

During the half-hour interview, Father Kolodiejchuk said that St. Teresa referred to people very personally, addressing each person as “my brother” or “my sister.” In this manner, everyone she met felt as if they were the only person alive to her in that moment.

“She was loving you as you needed to be loved,” the priest said. “At the same time she was loving Jesus in you, too.”

Throughout the book, St. Teresa is shown helping one person at a time, highlighting her one-to-one ministry. Many times, St. Teresa is shown taking care of a person’s bodily needs before their spiritual needs. “You have to meet those basic human needs before you can talk to someone about the catechism,” Father Kolodiejchuk explained.

The speaker in one of the book’s testimonials is quoted as saying, “For Mother, charity meant to love all people as God loves them. With Mother this was so outstanding, this love of neighbor. If they were in need of bodily care, she would do this first, clean them and feed them. And then she would take care of their souls. As Mother said, ‘On an empty stomach one can hardly think of God.’”

In describing the saint, Father Kolodiejchuk recalled a personal story. “One of her most outstanding gifts was her humility. She was one of the most admired women in the world, and I remember once, she told us, ‘God has given me the grace that what I hear goes in one ear and out the other.’”

St. Teresa is remembered as doing works that one may not necessarily think of when one thinks of a saint. For instance, she is shown cleaning toilets, picking maggots from the wounds of the sick and dying, and working with murderers and rapists. Yet, she did these tasks with love and charity.

In a visit to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, a person providing a testimonial is quoted, “For her, they were not criminals. They were made to the image and likeness of God, and so she gave them hope. She always found the right word or the right action to get them in touch with the Lord.”

“By faith, she is called to be a missionary of charity to them. She sees in a mystical way. She sees and believes this is Jesus,” said Father Kolodiejchuk further explaining how St. Teresa was able to accomplish the good she did.

It is no coincidence that St. Teresa is being canonized during the Jubilee Year of Mercy, he said. The Holy Father’s timing shows that she is an example for everyone of how to live a saintly, merciful life, he said.

“Mother had this sense that little things can have spiritual value when they are done with love. For God, everything is infinite, so small things take on infinite value. These are the kind of things we can all do,” Father Kolodiejchuk said.

Almost every moment and example cited in the book is something that everyone can do, he said.

“You don’t have to go to Kolkata to find the poor. A smile, a little act of kindness, a visit to someone who is lonely, all these are things that if we pay attention, we can do, beginning in our own family,” Father Kolodiejchuk said.

St. Teresa is quoted in her own words saying, “Naturally I can only give what I have. But I think everybody…knows deep down in their hearts that there is God, and that we have been created to love and to be loved; that we have not been created to be just a number in the world. But we have been created for some purpose, and that purpose is to be love, to be compassion, to be goodness, to be joy, to serve.”