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?