Few people got as close a look at Mother Teresa’s personal life as the sisters that lived with her. One man who shared the same kind of intimacy was her driver and bodyguard, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC.
“She would notice a person on the street lying there and she would ask to stop the car and go to that person,” Father Kolodiejchuk told about 50 people at Vancouver’s Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church Jan. 15.
The priest, who became the postulator for her cause for sainthood two years after her death, shared stories about the saint’s personality and the impact she made on the world.
What made her stand out from the crowd, he said, was the immense love with which she performed even the smallest tasks.
“If you didn’t know what she looked like and you entered the chapel, in the very ordinary things, like making the sign of the cross, the reverence in genuflection before the Eucharist, you might notice something,” he said. “She was really Jesus-centred. Whatever she did was out of love for Him.”
Mother Teresa would share her “five-finger Gospel” with sisters and those she met. Holding up one hand and assigning one word to each finger, she would quote Christ’s words: “You did it for me.”
“She did ordinary things with extraordinary love,” Father Kolodiejchuk said.
Even at the end of her life, when she was so frail she required a wheelchair and help to get dressed, Father Kolodiejchuk said the sisters were impressed with the great care she used in fastening the pins on her own head covering.
As he spoke, the priest also played clips from a film about Mother Teresa, in which she explains her actions in her own words.
“To each one of us, He has given a special gift,” she told the camera. “Maybe I can only peel potatoes, but I must do that peeling of potatoes beautifully. That’s my love for God in action. It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing.”
Her care for the poor was manifest in scene after scene as she stopped to speak with the sick, dying, and lonely.
Before Father Kolodiejchuk’s presentation, Bishop Ken Nowakowski led attendees in a moleben, a Ukrainian Catholic prayer service. This particular moleben honoured Mother Teresa and was especially composed for the occasion.
“We pray especially for the Missionaries of Charity, that through their inspiration we too can become those instruments of charity that certainly this Gospel is calling us to be,” prayed Bishop Nowakowski.
The moleben was composed by Father Richard Soo, SJ, the pastor at Eastern Catholic Church in Richmond, and sung in full for the first time that day.
It asked for Mother Teresa’s intercession under some expected titles, such as “servant of the poorest of the poor,” “comforter of the dying,” and “defender of the womb-dwelling pre-born.”
It also included some more surprising titles: “glass of the Trinity’s light,” and “athlete and ascetic in the dark night of the soul.”
Three local Missionaries of Charity, who live and serve in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, participated in the prayer service.
“Like Father Brian said (of Mother Teresa), we are also busy. When we see a poor person, we have to stop,” said one of the sisters. “We must help.”
Father Kolodiejchuk, who currently lives in Tijuana, also spoke at St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Church in Victoria Jan. 14, and at Dormition of the Mother of God Church in Kelowna Jan. 16, during his B.C. tour.
akrawczynski@rcav.org q
