"The bedrock of Mother Teresa's spiritual life"

Fr Hardon with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity

It is a privilege to say a few words about Mother Teresa at this first anniversary Mass, commemorating her death on September the fifth, 1997. I thought I would concentrate on some of the features of her spiritual life that I had come to know in my twenty-five years of knowing her.

Given the magnitude of the subject, suppose I prefix each of my half-dozen observations on her spiritual life with a simple sentence, and then briefly explain how she lived out this feature of her life.

Deep Faith in the Real Presence. In my estimation this was the bedrock of Mother Teresa’s spiritual life. She believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus Christ is really, truly, and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament. So deep was this faith that she declared, and must have repeated hundreds of times, “I make a holy hour everyday in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Our holy hour is our daily family prayer where we get together and pray the Rosary the first half-hour and the second half-hour in silence. Our adoration has doubled the number of our vocations.”

No words of mine can adequately explain how deep was Mother Teresa’s faith in the presence of Jesus, now on earth, just as He was during His visible stay in Palestine. Without this faith, there would not have been a Mother Teresa.

Continue at The Real Presence