‘A precious time’: a Missionary of Charity reflects on 35 years of service

Sr Mary* was about 17 years old, and sitting before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel at a refugee camp, when she heard Jesus say in the quiet of her heart, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’

For a girl that young, the cross was already heavy. Sr Mary and her family had fled the communist regime in their homeland, leaving behind all their dreams and hopes. ‘I suffered greatly,’ she says. ‘I felt as if I had lost everything I loved—except my immediate family.’

Despite the difficulties they experienced, Sr Mary and her siblings were brought up in the faith. ‘I knew about God and how I was supposed to live according to the commandments,’ she says, ‘but perhaps I had never met Jesus in a personal way.’

At the refugee camp, Sr Mary managed to get the key to the chapel—which was usually only open on Sundays for Mass—and began sneaking in and locking the door behind her to spend time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Here, she says, ‘hours felt like minutes because I experienced this overwhelming love of Jesus for me … his loving glance on me and his presence very strongly.’

I was so happy that joy was bubbling out of me, and I wanted to share it with everyone.

Nevertheless, for quite some time, Sr Mary tried not think about God’s invitation to follow him. ‘He was calling me to become a religious sister somewhere, somehow, but because I was in the middle of nowhere, really—in a refugee camp—I had no chance of pursuing it there,’ she says. However, in the quietness and intimacy of that chapel, she heard Jesus say, ‘My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ Eventually, as she allowed herself to rest in ‘that overwhelming love of Jesus’, she was able to answer the call to religious life.

So much joy came from saying ‘yes’ to God, Sr Mary recalls. ‘The life in the refugee camp was still the same–pretty miserable—but I was totally transformed on the inside. I was so happy that joy was bubbling out of me, and I wanted to share it with everyone,’ she says.

‘It was not a joy of this world. I felt as if Jesus had come in and taken over my life. He was living his life in me, and through me, without me doing anything for it, really, only saying “yes” to him.’

A few years later, Sr Mary and her family found a home as refugees in Australia. When they first arrived, no one in the family spoke English. Unable to find work in the city, the family moved away from the coast to Alice Springs. There, Sr Mary joined the Young Vinnies as a volunteer, and had one of her first encounters with the Missionaries of Charity.

‘One day, the sisters were passing by,’ she remembers. ‘When I saw them, my heart started beating so fast and I said, “These are the ones.” Somehow, the Lord told me they were the ones.’ It was not an easy decision for Sr Mary to follow this call. By this time, having learnt English and made many new friends, she thought she finally had her life back.

We’re made to love and to be loved. We’re made for communion, to belong to someone, and to be precious in someone’s eyes.

One Holy Thursday after Mass, though, she felt the urge to pray, so she asked her family to leave her in the chapel and to pick her up at midnight. ‘I knelt down and I said, “Jesus, please, let me know when you want me to go.” Then, in the quietness of her heart, she heard Jesus say, ‘I thirst, I thirst, I thirst.’

Sr Mary didn’t know at that time that quenching the thirst of Jesus on the cross was the charism of the Missionaries of Charity. ‘But I knew he was thirsting for me and for my love,’ she says. ‘It was an acute thirst that I needed to respond to now.’

After this night vigil, Sr Mary travelled for four days by bus to Melbourne to visit the Missionaries of Charity at their home in Fitzroy. ‘I wanted to belong to Jesus because I knew that there’s no one who loves me more than him.’ When she first entered the convent chapel, she saw the words ‘I thirst’ inscribed on the wall. ‘I felt so peaceful and I knew I was home,’ she remembers. ‘I felt it so strongly in my heart that it’s beyond doubt even until today.’

Sr Mary did her novitiate in the Philippines, where she found herself living next to a home for the dying. In this home, in a small room reserved for the ‘worst cases’, there was a woman with a terrible skin disease. The smell that emanated from the woman’s skin was very strong, and Sr Mary initially avoided her.

One Sunday after Mass, though, she felt challenged to go into the small room and spend time with the woman. ‘I found it so hard to take care of that lady,’ she remembers, ‘but when I came close, suddenly, I heard “The Body of Christ”. It really, really, hit me … I said to myself, “This is the Body of Christ.”’ Suddenly the smell and the feeling of revulsion didn’t matter anymore, Sr Mary says. ‘I was so happy and encouraged to look after the lady, and I did it with great love and determination.’

As Mother Teresa used to say, ‘It’s the same Jesus: Jesus in the Bread of Life and Jesus in the poor. There is only one Jesus.’ Sr Mary now feels ‘very much at ease’ with the people she serves, ‘no matter what their poverty may be. Wherever we are, they know we belong to them, and we know they are our people.’

This is a precious time that God is giving you. Don’t waste even one minute.

The Missionaries of Charity are present in some of the most war-torn places in the world, with convents in Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and Sierra Leone, among other places. Despite the threat to their lives, the sisters choose to remain with their people.

‘The sisters are so simple—so little—in the eyes of the world, but they get a special grace to stay in those places,’ Sr Mary says.

‘Our spiritual mission is to stand at the foot of the cross and to satiate the thirst of Jesus … When we see people suffering, it’s the extension of the suffering of Jesus, and you can hear in the poorest of the poor that cry of thirst.

‘The greatest poverty in the world is not hunger for a piece of bread; it’s loneliness,’ she says, quoting Mother Teresa. ‘We’re made to love and to be loved. We’re made for communion, to belong to someone, and to be precious in someone’s eyes. When two people are in love, they get married—husband and wife—and the overflow of their love is the child. For us, the overflow of our love—of our union with Jesus—is the service to the poorest of the poor.’

Two months before Mother Teresa’s death—and just before Sr Mary’s final profession—the two had a very special encounter in Kolkata, India. Sr Mary had been a novice for nine years but had never met the founder of her congregation, so she travelled to India to meet Mother Teresa and complete her last year of preparation before final vows.

‘She treated me as if she had known me forever,’ Sr Mary says. ‘When she talked to me, it was as if nothing and no one else existed, only me. You could experience God’s love overflowing from her, as if you were the only child, the only beloved child of God.’

By this time, Mother Teresa was very sick but still longed to serve the poor. At some point during their encounter, Mother Teresa bent down to buckle her sandals, as if she were going to the slums. When Sr Mary jumped in to help her, Mother Teresa held her face.

‘She looked deep into my eyes—as if looking into my heart,’ Sr Mary recalls. ‘She said, “Don’t waste even one minute; this is a precious time that God is giving you. Don’t waste even one minute.”’ This year, Sr Mary marks 35 years as a Missionary of Charity.

It’s through our own woundedness that we can understand the wounds of others, and that we can draw others to Jesus.

Reflecting on all these years of service, Sr Mary says, ‘I have learnt so much from the people that we serve; I have seen such greatness in them … It’s through our own woundedness that we can understand the wounds of others, and that we can draw others to Jesus. To bring them to that love—to that wounded heart of Jesus that gave everything for you, and for me, and for them—we can draw them through our own woundedness.’

Sr Mary suggests that those who want to enter into the wounded heart of Jesus might reflect on the words on Mother Teresa’s business card:

The fruit of silence is prayer,
the fruit of prayer is faith,
the fruit of faith is love,
the fruit of love is service,
the fruit of service is peace.

‘It’s not about the instrument; it’s not about the pencil,’ Sr Mary reminds us, ‘it’s about him, and his message, and his Gospel.’