In solitude on the Central Coast of California recently, I read a book called The Love That Made Mother Teresa by David Scott. Scott happens to be Vice Chancellor for Communications at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the book is subtitled “How Her Secret Visions and Dark Nights Can Help You Conquer the Slums of Your Heart.”
The book is simply written, accessible, and anecdotal. Scott beautifully captures the strangeness and paradox of the life of a saint. Mother Teresa lived to see the global reach of the internet and social media, yet the biographical details of her own youth and even adult life remain shrouded in mystery. She shunned the limelight but suffered the intrusions of photographers and TV cameras, offering up her discomfort for love of the poor. She kissed the leper, and she also dined with and accepted money from dictators.
Like Christ, in other words, she resisted identifying herself with either the right or the left. Like Christ, she fed the poor and she also knew that man does not live by bread alone. “Visiting one of her missionary outposts in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico, a slum where people lived in huts of corrugated metal and plywood and breathed the foul stench of factory waste and diesel fumes, she asked the people what their greatest need was. One man spoke for the rest. ‘La palabra de Dios,’ he said simply—the Word of God.”
Like many of us, perhaps, I struggle with the meaning of the New Evangelization. Evangelize to what? I sometimes wonder. Evangelize to whom? What does conversion even mean? I can be following the rules to a T, but when was the last time I wept at the trill of a bird, or a branch against the sky at dusk, or an unfurling leaf? When’s the last time I forgave someone? When’s the last time I apologized to someone? How intensely does my heart yearn? How willing am I to suffer? Those are things that can’t be measured or analyzed or reduced to a stat.
Read the rest here.
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