What does it mean to be a Missionary: The Life of Mother Teresa

A Talk on Mother Teresa
Given at St. Francis Xavier Church
By Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

What does it mean to be a Missionary?

Many people think they understand Mother Teresa.
They see a woman who was dedicated to helping the poor,
a nun who wanted to lift the poor out of their misery
and give them a chance at a better life--

In a word, they see a humanitarian.

As her official biography on the Nobel Prize website notes: Mother’s
Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world… provide [ing] effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries… and… undertake [ing] relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses…, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

It was largely for this humanitarian work
that Mother Teresa's was recognized and acclaimed
throughout the world and why she received
so many awards and distinctions,
including the sometimes prestigious Nobel Peace Prize,

But I think the Nobel committee got it wrong when they gave her the Nobel Peace Prize Because PRIMARILY,
Mother Teresa was not a humanitarian,
at least not in the conventional sense of the word.

Webster’s defines a humanitarian as:
a person promoting human welfare and social reform.

Clearly Mother Teresa was concerned for humans,
but not in the way the world promotes human welfare.

The world considers human welfare to be limited to the needs of the body, and perhaps human emotions, in a word,
the World’s concept of public welfare is: Materialistic

Seeing to the needs of the body, while forgetting the needs of the soul…
Forgetting that as St. Matthew tells us:
Man does not live on bread alone.

When asked why she was given the prize in 1979
the Nobel Committee replied:

"In making the award the Norwegian Nobel Committee has expressed its recognition of Mother Teresa's work in bringing help to suffering humanity."

Certainly she desired to help the suffering of the world

But I think this description of her life’s work is absolutely the opposite
of the way Blessed Teresa would have described it herself.

Mother Teresa LOVED the poor. SHE LOVED THE POOR!

As she tells it, already at age twelve,
even before she even felt a vocation to religious life
she first felt “a vocation to the poor…”.

In her book Come be my Light, she writes,
“I wanted to go out and give the life of Christ
to the people in missionary countries.”

“I must go—India is as scorching as Hell—but its souls are beautiful and precious because the Blood of Christ has bedewed them,” she wrote to her confessor shortly before departing Ireland for India.
Mother Teresa was not a humanitarian,
unless you define a humanitarian fundamentally
as a lover of the human soul.

Her apostolate was not to help the suffering,
to work for human welfare, or to promote social reform—
although these may have been the accidental results of her life’s work

Blessed Teresa didn’t desire to fix the problems of humanity in general
or the poor, in particular, she desired only to love the poor—

And if that meant feeding them, and clothing them,
Giving them water to drink, and bandaging their wounds, so be it.

Her apostolate was to share the love of Jesus
with those most in need, those most in danger of not hearing it.

and she saw poverty in all its different shades
from the streets of Bombai to the Penthouses of Manhattan.

In a world where so called “humanitarians” often dare to suggest
that the solution to the world’s problems is less humans,

Blessed Mother Teresa, the “humanitarian,”
shook the humanitarian establishment to its core,
when she suggested exactly the opposite.

Going to that podium, to deliver her Nobel lecture in Stockholm,
She reminded the world’s elite, and each of us of the Good News
which the world received two millennia ago,

when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary
“That God so loved the world that he gave His Son”

That message, which the Church celebrates tomorrow
on the Feast of the Annunciation, is the Gospel.

The Gospel of Life:
That every life is valuable, that every life have is good,
because God so loved the world to give His Son not for humanity, but for you and for me and the leper, and the man with AIDS,
a gift that culminates on Mt. Calvary
when He shows us perfect love—at the same time commanding us:
“do this in memory of me.”

In Stockholm Blessed Teresa reminded the world that our duty
is not to fix the world, but to love our neighbors as Christ loved us!

We hear this message affirmed in the Gospel today
in the story of Lazarus and the rich man.

The rich man’s sin was not failing to fix Lazarus’ life,
It was treating human life as if it were less valuable than the lives of dogs.

How far we have come in the name of humanity, when as a society we are more concerned about the welfare of unborn Eagles than unborn humans!

Mother Teresa realized at a young age that love for our God
Can only be practiced in this world through our love for His creatures.



She realized that each of us is sent, at the end of Mass with those words,
Ite Missa Est, go it is sent,
not to fix problems but rather to
do this in memory of me

Becoming what we receive in communion, perfect love,
the complete gift of self.

Each of us is called to be a missionary—
To bear witness to the goodness of life our own and the lives of others!

Mother’s vocation took her to the poorest of the poor
to bring Christ’s love to those most often forgotten and ignored
by the World, but as she herself acknowledged in her Nobel Lecture
her vocation was in a sense easy compared with ours.

As she noted:
I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society - that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult.

As Christians each and every day we are surrounded by the poor
Those who feel unloved, those who question the value of life,
Those in despair or on the brink of it,


Our way of loving our God and Savior Jesus Christ,
Is embracing those who suffer,
whether they suffer from the pangs of physical hunger
or the longings of a hungry heart.

We are each called to be missionary:
To our wives and children,
To young people, and the old,
To the poor but also the rich,
To all who are in need of love.

Mother Teresa’s life work,
was to point out that there is so much need for love in this world,
will we refuse to be Christ’s hands and feet so that the world can understand how much God loved the World?

Divine Mercy vs Ideology

A Sermon given on the Feast of Divine Mercy
at St. Margaret's Buzzard's Bay
on May 1st, 2011
by Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd

Oh Blood and Water that gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, I trust in You.


Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion --- inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us,
that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent,
but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will,
which is Love and Mercy itself.

Some of you might be familiar with this prayer.
It’s the conclusion of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy
Which was given to St. Faustina by our Lord,
To re-evangelize the Catholic world
Sharing with them the good news of God’s Divine Mercy.

During the 18th-19th-and 20th century, it seems like Divine Mercy,
Was a frequent and reoccurring theme
in private revelations of so many of the Saints
and in the apparitions of our Lord and His Blessed Mother.

This was the theme of the Sacred Heart, which revealed itself to
St. Margaret Mary in 1673,
And a theme in the Marian apparition to St. Catherine Labore,
A central theme in the Fatima apparition and of course
The explicit theme of the apparition made to St. Faustina.

Why has Divine Mercy been so central a theme?

I believe in large part it has to do with the ideas,
Which beginning in the 17th century, have transformed our world.

Ideas about a world where God is pushed into the background
Ignored completely.

Ideas which eventually pushed man also into the background
In favor of some notion of human progress.
The ideas of the Enlightenment which in the 18th and 19th centuries
Became the ideologies which caused so much death and destruction
In the 20th century.

Divine Mercy is a response to these ideologies,
Because first and foremost it is the promise of forgiveness
To those who have made idols out of science, politics, economics,
And human progress in general.

However more than just a promise of forgiveness it is
An alternative to ideology.

You might remember the first reading from Mass today
Where we heard about the early Church
About how they prayed and ate in common
Sharing all their goods.

To some this might seem like some sort of Socialist Utopia
But the fact of the matter is that the early church worked
Because it was based on love, not the desire to fix problems
and create a perfect society, ignoring the will and dignity of individuals.

Divine Mercy is an alternative to Ideology;
All ideology eventually depends on the coercive power of Government
To fix problems and to establish paradise by force.

In contrast Divine Mercy is based on the realization,
That the Kingdom of God, Heaven on Earth, can only begin in hearts.

And that no exercise of human power can solve people’s problems,
Only the gift of God’s love, and individual responses to it can do this.

So often as Catholics we fall into the mistaken belief that our duty to love
Requires us to address all the worlds problems: hunger, thirst, sickness, nakedness


We spend so much money and effort on so called “charities” and
We ask our government to do the same.

And at one level there is nothing wrong with this,
Our Lord does command us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked

However, it is so important that so called charity becomes actual charity.
The problem with poor people isn’t that their hungry or thirsty, or sick,

The problem with poor people is in truth the problem that all humans have!
They need to, they desire to, be loved.

In my work with the poor around the world I quickly learned that
Throwing money at beggars and the homeless
Was at best counterproductive, and at worst insulting.

Like St. Francis with the Leper, what the poor most desire
Is someone to embrace them, to remind them of their dignity,
Someone to love them the way our God loves us.

God’s Divine Mercy reminds us that the Sacrifice of Jesus
Didn’t fix any of the world’s problems, but simply showed us
God’s immense love for us.

And that was enough!

It must be enough for us to love and trust God,
That is the message of Divine Mercy.

Eternal Father we offer you the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity
Of your dearly beloved Son…

We offer you the perfect give of Love
And because of this love we beg you
To have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Have mercy on us so that we might be set free to love,
Have mercy on us so that we might be set free to trust in your loving plan.

Ideology is a failure to trust
A failure to trust in God
A failure to trust in the goodness of humanity
A failure to trust in our own ability to do good and avoid evil.

Ultimately it’s a form of idolatry which worships human progress
and the state and material wellbeing as God.

In response to this despair, this break down in trust
in the goodness of God and creation and man
in these last few centuries God has offered man an alternative
the Blood and Water which poured forth from the heart of Jesus.

The love and mercy which promises to transform the whole world
If only we trust in Him.

It’s not surprising that God’s merciful heart was first revealed in France
The center of the ideologies which almost destroyed the world in 1673.

And it’s not surprising that our devotion to Divine Mercy,
Was revealed to a Polish nun, living at the heart of a country
That had every right to despair, having been ravaged by ideology after ideology
But which found strength to survive and prosper
Even in the face of violence and persecution,
Because of its trust in God.

Divine Mercy is not just about God forgiving our sins
It’s about our heartfelt faith that God is in charge.

As the image of Divine Mercy notes: Jesu Ufam Tobie
Jesus I trust in you.

This trust is the heart of Divine Mercy,
Trust that even in the midst of a crazy world
God is in Charge.

Trust that even when our children and families fall away from the faith
God is in Charge, calling them home, and offering them mercy.

Trust that even in the midst of suffering and sadness,
God is in Charge, reminding us of the Cross, and its ultimate outcome.

And so we return to that pray, with which we end the Chaplet:

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion --- inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us,
that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent,
but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will,
which is Love and Mercy itself.

God’s holy will, for us and for the world, is LOVE, is Mercy itself,
Will we trust in Him?

As the Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday reminds us,
Jesus came to give us His Peace.

Three times in the Gospel today He says: Peace be with you

And as He tells us in the Gospel of John; not as the world gives it
do I give it to you.

Jesus’ peace is the peace that comes from the sure and certain knowledge
That GOD LOVES YOU

And that He is in charge, no matter how things appear in the world.

Since the beginning of time God has offered us this love and
Simply asked us to show Him our Love in turn, by trusting in Him.

This was the proposition God made to Adam and Eve
When He gave them everything in the Garden, except that one tree
Which He promised would lead to death—do you trust Him?

This was what God asked of Cain and Able
When He asked them for sacrifices of the first fruits of their labor
He asked them for the best, and for their trust,
That if they gave God their best, He would bless them with all they needed
Do you trust Him?

Trust was what God asked of Abram and Sarah when He promised to make them
The parents of many children, even in their old age.

Trust was what God desired when He asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son.

Trust was what God asked of Joseph, and Moses when they went before Pharaoh
And what He asked over and over again of the Israelites in the desert
And in the promised land.

Trust is what He asks of us today—Do we trust Him?

Trust in God is answer to all ideologies, because it allows us to see
Or at least have faith, that all the world’s problems are being attended to
By one who has the power to insure humanity’s happiness.

Lets’ make the Divine Mercy pray our own today
As we pray—JESUS I TRUST IN YOU.