Fr. Andrew Carl Remembers Mother Teresa's Advice
Note: Fr. Andrew Carl Wisdom, OP, recently shared his memories of his 1983 meeting with Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Little did I know at the age of 23, as a seminarian from Rockford, IL, I would meet a living saint who would be canonized in my lifetime! I remember the first words Mother Teresa spoke to me with a twinkle in her eyes, “We don’t see many Americans around here.” It was the second day of a six-week trip throughout India working with the Missionaries of Charity. That day I met Mother at her Home for the Dying in Calcutta, I was taking care of a man brought in from the surrounding streets. I still see the silent, grateful smile on his face of sheer wonder that anyone would bother with a nobody like him. But Mother always spoke of Jesus’ words on the cross: “I thirst.” Jesus thirsts…for us…for our love. We quench His great thirst when we see and love His face in others, especially the poorest of the poor.
Later that week, I went to Mass at the convent of the Missionary Sisters. I confess, instead of paying attention, I was looking for a glimpse of Mother. But she was lost in the sea of the blue and white of the Missionaries’ iconic habit. Leaving afterwards, one of the Sisters asked me to wait on the patio. I assumed she was getting cookies for the Missionary Brothers. Then I heard a greeting. I turned around to see Mother Teresa. We talked alone for 15 minutes about the world, her work and my being a seminarian. She never played the saint. She was as down to earth as my feisty grandmother, passionate about the values of the gospel the world was forgetting. Her words that day stick with me: “It’s wonderful that you came here Andrew, but you are more needed in your own country where the greatest poverty is spiritual.” Then I asked, “Mother, do you have any advice for a beginning seminarian?” She responded, “Be a humble priest, Andrew.” With that and a smile, she was gone. And yet, she and that moment have never left me in all these 41 years later!
