One of my favorite Saints is St. Teresa of Calcutta, known more commonly as Mother Teresa. I love her because she was a woman unafraid to proclaim challenging truths. In the midst of her acceptance speech for the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa had this to say:
And I feel one thing I want to share with you all, the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? Even in the scripture it is written: Even if a mother could forget her child – I will not forget you – I have carved you in the palm of my hand. Even if mother could forget, but today millions of unborn children are being killed. And we say nothing. In the newspapers you read numbers of this one and that one being killed, this being destroyed, but nobody speaks of the millions of little ones who have been conceived to the same life as you and I, to the life of God, and we say nothing, we allow it. To me the nations who have legalized abortion, they are the poorest nations. They are afraid of the little one, they are afraid of the unborn child, and the child must die because they don’t want to feed one more child, to educate one more child, the child must die.
Those are challenging words, but they sprang from Mother Teresa’s deep commitment to the poor, especially those who were unloved. Earlier in this same speech, she spoke of the poverty that comes from being unloved. Mother Teresa knew in her bones that the deepest poverty didn’t lie just in the physical, but in the lack of love. Speaking about Jesus, she said:
And to make sure that we understand what he means, he said that at the hour of death we are going to be judged on what we have been to the poor, to the hungry, naked, the homeless, and he makes himself that hungry one, that naked one, that homeless one, not only hungry for bread, but hungry for love, not only naked for a piece of cloth, but naked of that human dignity, not only homeless for a room to live, but homeless for that being forgotten, been unloved, uncared, being nobody to nobody, having forgotten what is human love, what is human touch, what is to be loved by somebody, and he says: Whatever you did to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.
Those words of Jesus, “You did it to me,” drove her to be that unflinching voice for the poorest of the poor, especially those who were unloved, uncared for and forgotten. Mother Teresa saw that to love those around us was the best thing we could do to live the Gospel. She encouraged all she met to radically accept Jesus’ invitation to love. Because of this, she didn’t think twice about speaking against abortion to an international audience. It sprang from her deep desire to speak for those unborn children who need love, whose mothers need help in order to lovingly bring them into the world.
I have Mother Teresa’s fearless words on my mind and heart this Sunday because there is no better thing to cast out our fears than the victory of the Cross. Today we carry palms in our hands remembering the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. But His triumphant entry wasn’t to please the crowds shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David,” because just days later, many of those same people would join their voices to call for His condemnation. Jesus came riding on a donkey to inaugurate a new and radical reign of love, love that is willing to sacrifice everything for the good of the other. Jesus’ victory wasn’t about putting Himself above the adoring crowds to reign over them, it was about bringing Himself low enough to serve them, even if this meant giving the last drop of His blood. St. Paul’s inspired words remind us of just this reality:
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Only after this does St. Paul speak of Jesus’ exultation. Jesus is exalted not by pandering to the voice of the mob, but by humbling Himself in order to serve people’s deepest needs. Jesus didn’t come to save a faceless group, but to save each and every individual person by loving him or her with every fiber of His being and giving up His life in payment of the debt of their sin. Jesus’ love shows us that true victory consists not in having the fleeting approval of those with the loudest megaphones, but in the choice to serve others, even if it means enduring great suffering. Elsewhere, Jesus warns that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
So for all of us who claim the name of Christian, these palm branches that we each carry, an ancient symbol of victory, should challenge us to look at how well we are allowing Jesus’ victorious love to permeate our own lives. The exaltation we seek is not worldly approval, but the exaltation that comes from living in that self-outpouring love we see on the Cross. We are truly exalted when we humbly serve those most in need around us, as our victorious Lord always did. True glory consists of living in that self-outpouring love which is a share in God Himself!
Mother Teresa knew deeply what it meant to embrace the victory of the Cross. She showed it by the fearless way that she put herself at the service of those in need. I pray that we all examine how well we are cooperating with the Lord’s grace by loving those in need around us and accepting the suffering that true love brings.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us the way to truly love through the Cross of your Son. Jesus, help us not to run away from the suffering that love entails, but to embrace it generously. Holy Spirit, give us the courage to love well and the clarity to see those around us who are most in need of our love. We ask this through Christ, our victorious Lord. Amen. +