You don't hear much about Mother Teresa these days. She has been in ill health and out of public view, and that's a shame. The world, especially now, needs someone of her vision and strength.
The frail little Albanian nun, now 82, has lived a long and fruitful life of charitable service to others, especially the poorest of the poor. She establishes her humble missions according to the meager means available to her.She cuts no deals. She twists no arms. She threatens no careers or fortunes. She compromises no beliefs.
"You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have eyes to see," she once said, referring to the slum-ridden Indian city where she began the work of her Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she established in 1948. "There are people unwanted, unloved, rejected by society. They are completely forgotten and completely left alone. That is the greatest poverty of the rich countries."
She must have had America in mind.
In this land that worships political and economic power, a tiny woman of faith came quietly from the vile wretchedness of Calcutta to our shores some years ago to heal not only sickness but also the deep wounds of neglect, alienation and abandonment among those she found here.
That she found the need to come to the United States at all and establish her missions must cause discomfort among those who profess any conscience at all.
Yet the power Mother Teresa wields in this most power-hungry nation on earth is the same as that gently bestowed in the teeming ghettos of Calcutta or in Haiti. She and her sisters come simply to love and to serve.
That's all well and good, we say. We believe that. Look at the money we give to charities. Look at the taxes we pay.
Yet millions are in economic poverty, millions more in a deeper poverty of despair and resignation, in this, the "richest" country in the world.
Mother Teresa sees the world differently than most people do. All people are her brothers and sisters - queens and lepers, Wall Street arbitragers and street-corner beggars, Christian, Hindu and Muslim, those with no religion at all.
In a world driven by selfishness, exploitation and greed, her life gives serene witness to a belief in selflessness, patience, forgiveness, gentleness, gen-ero-sity and kindness.
Mother Teresa's mission is not to formulate policy or to implement programs. In her own simple words, she seeks "to be a carrier of God's love to the world."
At the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations in 1985, in the giant hall of power known as the General Assembly, the diminutive nun, a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, stood meekly in her white sari before the bejeweled dignitaries. She was introduced as "the most powerful woman in the world."
The scene was one of beautiful irony, lost perhaps even today on those who still lust after a power of another sort, but clear enough "if you have eyes to see."