Pope Francis calls Mother Teresa an 'icon for our age'

Mother Teresa understood the path to peace, made small sacrifices every day

Published: September 2, 2016

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

CNS / KNA

Blessed Teresa of Kolkata cares for a sick man in an undated photo. She will be canonized a saint by Pope Francis Sept. 4 at the Vatican.

CNS / KNA

Blessed Teresa of Kolkata cares for a sick man in an undated photo. She will be canonized a saint by Pope Francis Sept. 4 at the Vatican.

VATICAN CITY — When Pope Francis canonizes Blessed Teresa of Kolkata Sept. 4, he won’t simply be fulfilling a special duty of his office, he will be honoring a woman he has called “a symbol, an icon for our age.”

When talking about the intersection of prayer, mercy, concrete acts of charity and peacemaking, Mother Teresa was Pope Francis’ go-to reference.

In one of his early morning homilies in November, Pope Francis spoke about war and about how, by the way they live their lives, many people promote hatred rather than peace and selling weapons rather than sowing love.

“While weapons traffickers do their work, there are poor peacemakers who give their lives to help one person, then another and another and another,” the pope said. Mother Teresa was clearly one of the peacemakers, he added.

“With cynicism, the powerful might say, ‘But what did that woman accomplish? She spent her life helping people die,’” Pope Francis said, noting that the cynics do not realize that Mother Teresa understood the path to peace and they do not.

A much longer papal reflection on lessons from the life of Mother Teresa was published in July; Pope Francis wrote the preface to an Italian publisher’s book of talks Mother Teresa gave in Milan in 1973.

Mother Teresa’s life showed the centrality of prayer, charity, mercy in action, family and youth, Pope Francis wrote.

“Mother Teresa untiringly invites us to draw from the source of love: Jesus crucified and risen, present in the sacrament of the Eucharist,” the pope wrote. She began each day with Mass and ended each day with eucharistic adoration, which made it possible “to transform her work into prayer.”

Her prayer led her to the extreme edges of society — the peripheries — recognizing the poor and the marginalized as her brothers and sisters and offering them compassion, he said.

The little nun in the blue-trimmed white sari teaches people that “feeling compassion is possible only when my heart embraces the needs and wounds of the other,” witnessing to God’s caress, the pope wrote.

The Gospel tells people they will be judged at the end of time for how they fed the hungry, clothed the naked and cared for others in need, he said. “Mother Teresa made this page of the Gospel the guide for her life and the path to her holiness — and it can be for us, as well.”

Pope Francis also noted in the book that, from her experience ministering to the rejected, Mother Teresa knew and constantly emphasized the importance of family and family prayer. Home, he said, is the place people learn “to smile, to forgive, to welcome, to sacrifice for one another, to give without demanding anything in return, to pray and suffer together, to rejoice and help each other.”