Optional Memorial of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Virgin
In today’s reading from his Epistle to the Colossians, Paul describes Jesus as “the image of the unseen God.” It is through the Incarnation that God became flesh in Jesus and made the invisible God present by his words and deeds, his healings and his announcement that the Kingdom of God was being realized in their midst. His life. Death, resurrection, and ascension were his reaffirmation that every human person is a child of God, loved and cherished by God with a dignity that no one could take from them.
Saints are people who find their mission and their passion in some aspect of the message of the Gospel or a specific teaching of Jesus. For Father Eymard, it was the Eucharist.
Today we celebrate the feast of a woman who carried Paul’s assertion that Jesus is the image of the unseen God one step further. Her life and ministry, her message was unequivocal: every human person is the image of the unseen Christ and is to be loved, honored, and cared for. She sought to honor the Christ in every person because of their identity with Christ. She fought to honor and protect the life of the child in the womb, the poor, malnourished, and unhoused child, the elderly, abandoned and left to die alone, those suffering from disease with no resources to seek relief and healing. No one was beyond the reach of her loving heart, for each and every one of them was for her the real presence of Christ.
She was nourished in this mission, this obsession, by daily Mass and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Her grounding in this real presence impelled her to go out and touch the real presence of the suffering Christ, what she termed his uncomfortable and disturbing presence. She calls us all to do the same. The Eucharist charges us to do the same.
Let Us Pray:
God of all Creation, you raised among us, in our own era, Teresa of Calcutta. Her life was consumed with recognizing and responding to the real presence of your Son in all those suffering rejection, abandonment, loneliness, hunger, hopelessness, and pain. You call each of us, who are fed by the Body and Blood of your Son, to be broken and poured out in loving service. As we celebrate today, the feast of Saint Teresa, pour out on us an abundance of your grace that we might respond with love and generosity to those near us in need of hope and a loving embrace.
