Like everyone else, Else had weaknesses. What made her different was her selflessness and her firm belief in the nearness of God.
She once expressed the desire to die with her hands reaching up to
heaven, and when asked what her greatest wish was, she said,
“Only to love others more.”
As unassuming as Mother Teresa was,
something of God unquestionably radiated from her. She showed her love in deeds; that
is what made her words significant.
Everything in her life was an expression of prayer – her scolding,
her humor, her example of serving the poor instead of preaching
about it. Her work continues to inspire people all over the world,
making the promise in Revelation a reality: “Blessed are they who
die in the Lord, for their works shall follow after them.”
Once someone asked Mother Teresa where she found the
strength for the enormous work she did for the poor. Her answer:
My secret is quite simple – I pray! You should spend at least half
an hour in the morning and an hour at night in prayer. You can
pray while you work. Work doesn’t stop prayer, and prayer
doesn’t stop work. It requires only that small raising of mind to
him: “I love you, God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you
now.” Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers.
Prayer cannot be an excuse for inaction. Love must be put into
deeds. As writer Anna Mow used to say, “Love is an action, not a
feeling.” If we pray for God’s will to be done on earth, then our life
will be a life of work. For just as faith without works is dead, prayer
without work is hypocrisy. Unless our love is expressed in deeds,
our spiritual life will wither and die. John Michael Talbot tells us
that, for Francis of Assisi, solitude and service were two sides of
the same coin. And Dorothy Day said that she believed many people
pray not through words but through the witness of their lives,
“through the work they do and the love they offer to others.”
Each of us can offer to God the things we do during the course of
the day. George Arthur Buttrick once wrote that “fields are not
plowed by praying over them. But let a man remember that fields
become a drudgery, or a botched labor, or even a greed and a bitterness, unless the plowing is done in prayer.” There is a difference
between just doing something, and making it a prayer. When we
make our work a prayer, we do it not only for ourselves or our
neighbor, but for God. All our loving deeds, all our work for human
justice and the relief of suffering, are not really prayers until self is
out of the way, and we acknowledge God and recognize that we
are just as much in need of him as he is in need of us to do his
works.
For my parents, service was a form of prayer, born out of their
conviction that loving thoughts and words must be brought to fruition in concrete deeds. My mother, particularly, could never find
enough minutes in the day to do what she wanted in the way of
service to others, showing them love, meeting their needs. Both my
parents believed and taught us children that a person can use a day
the right way or the wrong way, or do nothing at all with that day;
but each day gone is one day less that we have to serve. Stephen
Grellet writes: “I expect to pass through this world but once: any
good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show
to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Author Dorothy Gauchat, an old friend,
dedicated her life to
serving disabled children with her husband Bill. To them, Jesus’
words, “whatever you do unto the least of them, you do unto me”
were not only an observation, but a command. Bill died some years
ago, and Dorothy has carried on the work alone, although within
the last year, due to her age and health, she has had to turn most of
the work over to others.
Living and working with such children in a spirit of compassion
and reverence for each child is a service of love; in fact, it is a
prayer, because it is an offering to God. It is strenuous and at times
tedious work – long days and short nights – but it is rewarding beyond measure. Dorothy writes:
Over the past fifty years children have been the center of my
life – my own children as well as many youngsters with handicaps
whose parents for various reasons were unable to care for them.
What began in the 1940s as a small hospitality home for children
with special needs grew like “the woman who lived in a shoe
and had so many children she didn’t know what to do.” Daily
requests came from agencies and hurting parents, begging us to
take yet another child. We already had fifteen infants and toddlers, and more requests led us to delve deeply into the needs of
special children.
Trips to state institutions where these children were sent revealed the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. As I walked from
one building to another, I was sickened by the sight of unloved,
uncared-for children swarming around like frightened lambs,
with outstretched arms begging to be loved.
When we started this work, there were no books or courses
on the subject of handicapped children. The result of our research and the growing knowledge of our pioneer methods in
caring for these children strengthened our conviction that we
were called, indeed had the personal responsibility as followers
of Christ, to make room for more children. First, with the help of
friends and foundations, guided by the hand of God, we built
an addition to our home, which enabled us to welcome twentyfive more children. Eventually we bought a large house situated
on a lovely tract of land with stables where horses had been
boarded. The house, named the Croft, became a group home
for fifteen young adults who had outgrown the children’s home.
When our wheelchair-bound children reached the age of eighteen years, another home was built to fit their needs.
Perhaps our example of “love made visible” was responsible
for touching the hearts of countless generous friends. This was
the forerunner of dramatic changes in attitude of the powers
controlling the care and destinies of retarded and mentally
handicapped children and adults. When community group
homes sprang up and state institutions began to release patients, society in general seemed to better accept folks with special needs.
Six years ago I was present at the birth of my grandson
Jonathan. At the invitation of the doctor, I stood between the
doctor and nurse to witness this birth. I was transfixed at the
awesome sight as the newborn slipped from the safety of his
mother’s womb into the hands of the doctor. The joy of that
moment was turned into sorrow at the sight of the twisted legs
of this little boy. I fled from the delivery room, overcome now
with grief and anger. Anger with God that he sent a handicapped infant to this young couple, whose father, Todd, was
wheelchair-bound with cerebral palsy.
Tears washed over my face as I drove home, demanding
“Why, God, why? How could you do this to my son and daughter-in-law?” There was little sleep for me that night my grandson was born; the pain of seeing little Jonathan facing limitations in life as his father had was almost unbearable. As dawn
broke, a calmness embraced me as though being held by God.
He works in mysterious ways. I found myself comforted with the
thought that this little boy was sent with a special mission to be a
special son. He would truly understand his father’s inability to
run, speak, walk, or do the active things other young fathers do
with their sons. There seemed little doubt that there would be a
special bond between father and son. Days later, I caught a
glimpse of the infant cradled in the arms of his Dad. It seemed to
portray a different picture of the Madonna and child. He surely
was a gift from God. And eventually, surgeries, casts, and braces
enabled Jonathan to walk…
One of hundreds of children who came to join our family
was an infant named Anthony. We were told he was blind and
deaf. He was hydrocephalic, which means he had severe water
pressure on the brain. The water pressure was slightly visible. In
a short time, it was apparent that Anthony could both see and
hear. To me, he was a beautiful infant with tiny features, a pert
little nose, brown hair and bright eyes. He was another child
who needed to be loved. It did not take long for our caregivers
to fall in love with him, especially his assigned caregiver, Rita. By
nature, Rita seemed gruff, opinionated, with a touch of salty impatience toward younger members of our staff. Beneath this
crusty shell, however, beat a heart full of tenderness. To me, she
was a diamond in the rough. The staff loved and respected her.
But the children loved her most of all, especially little Anthony…
I have cared for many handicapped children and adults. Every one of them has touched the lives of countless people, staff,
relatives, and friends. They, the children, communicate their love
in a mysterious but tangible way. I often came upon folks just
holding Anthony’s tiny hand, feeling his love, his innocence,
flowing from his hands to theirs. In my mind, there has never
been a doubt that this precious infant was sent by God to teach
us to love and to be loved. We were told that Anthony would
not live beyond three years, but love is a powerful elixir. He lived
for nine.
Dorothy Day had a great love and respect for the Gauchats and the
work they did, and visited them often. Each visit was a spiritual
refreshment. In her book
On Pilgrimage,
she wrote:
If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith
(and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for
faith), if I did not have faith that such work as the Gauchats’ does
lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those
who are suffering on both sides of this ghastly struggle somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things,
the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.
Owen and Alice
were a childless couple in their forties who moved
to our community in 1943. A fall from a horse left Owen with a
permanently stiff knee. He walked with a severe limp and always
carried a cane. Alice herself was not the strongest; she had suffered
from painful rheumatoid arthritis since her younger years, which
became crippling as she grew older. But when, in the aftermath of
World War II, the opportunity arose for the community to take in
ten German war orphans, the Humphreys eagerly volunteered to
serve as houseparents. They welcomed these children into their
home with tremendous love and devotion.
Neither Owen nor Alice knew any German, and none of the children spoke English, but as the months went by, they grew together
as a real family. Soon three more children were added to their number. The war orphans had been uncared for and lacked any kind of
discipline. The Humphreys gathered them, read to them, taught
them arts and crafts, worked and played with them, and most of all
loved them. They were both teachers, so they were with children
all day, but after school they still had their own thirteen children
to occupy, bathe, play with, and put to bed.
Years later, when Alice was asked, “How did you ever manage?”
she replied, “I prayed all day for guidance and strength. And it was
our privilege, our joy!” From a letter Owen wrote to Alice while he
was on a trip:
When I think through the years we have had together, I am
deeply happy for what has been given to us. We have not had
all that we wished for, and our great desire for children of our
own was not granted to us, but we have been given the very
great joy of caring for children as though they were our own.
Though every community surely has at least one such dedicated
person, not all of us are given the opportunity or the vision, let
alone the strength, for great works of mercy. But why should that
hinder us from doing what we can? Whenever I think about the
meaning of service, Sara, a deceased friend who never seemed to
tire of showing kindness to everyone around her, comes to mind.
Life was not easy for Sara, and there were many heartaches along
with the joys. Three of her fourteen children were taken from her
by disease – one from meningitis, another from diphtheria, and still
another from a heart condition. Sara was a capable cook, and she
especially enjoyed putting away food for winter: from planting and
harvesting to canning and freezing. Even in her seventies, she insisted on gardening alongside her daughters in the family’s large
vegetable patch. Sara also loved to work with wool, and could be
found hour after hour spinning at her wheel. In between she knitted mittens and sweaters for anyone who needed them.
Sara found plenty of small needs that had to be attended to every day: a discouraged neighbor who needed an uplifting word, a
sick or house-bound person to visit. And yet she was a quiet
woman, not a talker but a doer. For her, the most important prayer
was simply service.
After Sara died, a small sheet of paper was found in her desk,
with words she had laboriously copied out from Mother Teresa :
A few ways to practice humility:
Speak as little as possible of oneself.
Mind your own business.
Avoid curiosity.
Do not want to manage other people’s affairs.
Accept contradiction and correction cheerfully.
Pass over the mistakes of others.
Accept blame when innocent.
Yield to the will of others.
Accept insults and injuries.
Accept being slighted, forgotten, and disliked.
Be kind and gentle, even under provocation.
Do not seek to be specially loved and admired.
Never stand on one’s dignity.
Choose always the hardest.
Dostoyevsky tells the story of a selfish old woman who died.
Her angel went to God and asked how this woman could be saved.
God asked the angel if she had ever done a good deed. The angel
had to think hard, because she had done very little for others while
on earth. But yes, many years ago she had pulled up an onion from
her garden and given it to a beggar woman. God told the angel to
get that onion and go down to hell, find the woman, and bring her
up to heaven. The angel leaned down into hell, and told the woman
to catch hold of the onion so he could pull her out. At this, the
other sinners in hell, seeing how she was being saved, began clinging on to her. But she was a very possessive woman, and she began
kicking them.
“I’m
to be pulled out, not you! It’s my onion, not
yours.” As soon as she said that, the onion broke. She fell back into
hell. The angel wept and went away.