With the passing of Mother Teresa from this life, we engage
in a period of reflection upon her message to the world. Priests
for Life does this with gratitude for the personal interest she
took in this apostolate. Along with her passionate conviction
about the sanctity of every human life, she had a deep sense of
the special vocation of the priest. She therefore saw Priests
for Life as a logical and deeply needed mission in the Church.
In June of 1994, Fr. Frank Pavone and
some of the Priests for Life staff spent five days in Calcutta,
having intensive meetings with Mother Teresa about abortion and
the pro-life movement. She wrote a letter of endorsement, which
is reprinted below.
Reflections on the life and work of Mother Teresa
characteristically focus on her "love for the poor." She did
love the poor. But her understanding of what poverty is was much
more profound than that of most observers. To grasp it, we need
to appreciate her message about the vocation of the human
person. We were made to love and be loved, she would often
remark. To give and receive love is the calling and greatness of
human beings.
The
fundamental poverty, then, is to fail to give and receive love.
That is why a society which throws away its children by abortion
is poorer than one which does not have many material resources.
The society that permits abortion fails in its vocation to give
love, to welcome the inconvenient person. To fail to love is
poverty. To fail to love to the point where the other person is
not even recognized as a person, and is legally destroyed, is
poverty to the extreme.
Mother Teresa picked up the dying from the streets of
Calcutta with the same love with which she pulled women away
from abortion facilities. Love is indivisible. It means making
room for the other person, whether that person is in the street
or in the womb. It means feeding that person, not just with food
for the body, but with the recognition, attention, and
compassion that their personal dignity demands. This is why
those who praise Mother Teresa's work "for the poor," but do not
share her opposition to abortion, simply have failed to
understand both.
We are called to give and receive love. As we rise above the
culture of death, we will be free of the poverty that fails to
welcome our brothers and sisters. We will, instead, sacrifice
ourselves for them, and will discover the kind of riches which
only grow greater the more we give them away.
Following are Mother Teresa's words to Priests for Life ( click
here to see actual handwritten letter):
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Calcutta, 24-1-95
Dear Priests for Life,
I was very happy to meet Fr. Frank Pavone who told me
that the Church in the United States has an association
called "Priests for Life".
I hope that many priests and deacons will join the
"Priests for Life." This association needs many members
to educate and encourage all the priests and deacons who
must all work together to stop the terrible war against
unborn children.
Often priests and deacons do not know what to say or
do to educate their people about the terrible evil of
abortion. I am praying that those who joined the
"Priests for Life" will be able to strengthen and
support those priests and deacons who feel unable to
lead their people in the struggle against abortion. Let
us pray.
God bless you,
M. Teresa MC
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I have been thinking a lot these days about the time I spent
with Mother Teresa in 1994, when she invited me to speak to
sisters and priests in India about the work of Priests for Life.
We had many discussions about the pro-life movement. When I told
her about some of the legal persecution that pro-life people
face, she looked at me and said, "Father, if we had laws like
that here in India, I would have been thrown in jail many
times!"
We discussed her February 3, 1994 speech at the
National Prayer Breakfast, in
which she told our government leaders that a country that allows
a mother to kill her own child is not teaching its people how to
love, but rather how to use violence to get what they want. I
told her what an impact the speech made on the pro-life
community. "What about the rest of the American people?", she
asked me at once. She then gave me a homework assignment to
spread the speech far and wide, which Priests for Life has been
doing ever since.
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