by FARZANA VERSEY
Mother Teresa (left) is seen with Hillary Clinton, who was first lady at the time, at the opening of a home for infants in Washington, D.C., in 1995 PHOTO/CBC
I met Mother Teresa above an antique mantelpiece in the living room of a celebrity. Her image shared equal space with Husain’s horses on the walls. The ‘saint of the gutter’ seemed anachronistic in that high-ceilinged room. For many of those ‘touched’ by her, she had transformed into a collection, an investment, even a penance providing absolution for guilt.
On Sunday, September 4, when Pope Francis canonises Mother Teresa, there will be many walking around with the halo of samaritans in the cause of the saint. Sainthood does not depend on ideology but the ability to produce miracles, and Mother Teresa has had two to her credit. Canonisation is a religious matter. Yet, it becomes political, because the miracles infringe on society and mores.
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In 1998, Mother appeared in a paddy field – as a vision to Monica Besra, a tribal woman with a cyst in her stomach. She says she got miraculously cured when she held a medallion that had been blessed by Mother: “I tried many doctors, lots of medicines but nobody could really heal me. On the death anniversary of Mother Teresa, I prayed to her and I could see Mother herself.”
Sister Nirmala, Mother’s successor at the Missionaries of Charity, had said then, “It has been investigated scientifically and it has been proven it’s a miracle.” Aside from the verifiability claims, does not the stature of an ecclesiastical event get reduced if science is brought in to confirm it?
Anne Sebba, associate producer of ‘Mother Teresa: The Making of a Modern Saint’, wrote, “There is an especially strong paradox in Mother Teresa’s case, since she did not devote her efforts to effecting miracle cures. Doctors and nurses, even those who wished to join her order, had no particular role to play there. She said many times that she was, quite simply, demonstrating Christ’s love in action by helping people die a beautiful death, not by helping them live an extra few years. So why the need for a miracle? Because it is the only way to insist that God, not man, has directly and specifically intervened in the process.”
Faith can move mountains, but it was too pat for a simple villager to have prayed to Mother and even remembered her death anniversary. That she converted to Christianity after the miracle and her family was provided for by the missionaries of charity, and that some years later she would accuse them of neglecting her, seems to suggest a transaction. The sudden cure should have been boon enough. Why would the nuns take charge of the family?
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