Missionaries of Charity have been active in Vancouver since Mother Teresa’s 1988 visit
The B.C. Catholic
Missionaries of Charity in Vancouver are overjoyed the Church has declared their foundress a saint.
“Heaven and all of us on earth are rejoicing in God’s glory,” said local superior Sister Xaveria Bilung, MC. “He has given us another intercessor in heaven.”
She spoke these words at Holy Rosary Cathedral, which was nearly full as priests, religious, and lay people gathered for Mass and to honour St. Teresa of Kolkata Oct. 2.
Mother Teresa established her congregation in the archdiocese during a visit to Vancouver in 1988. To this day, nuns in white and blue saris can be seen ministering to the poor, hungry, and homeless in the Downtown Eastside.
Sister Bilung told The B.C. Catholic that she and the four other Missionaries of Charity who live in Vancouver were not surprised to hear that she was going to be canonized. “She was a very holy person,” said the sister, who lived with Mother Teresa for 10 years.
“I have seen her good work and her prayer life. Everything, it drew me. She opened the house in our diocese. That’s how I saw her. Everything changed in the city. All the homeless, all the lepers, all the beggars disappeared. I wondered: where did they all go?”
That witness inspired Sister Bilung to become a Missionary of Charity herself. “The sisters came. They were the ones taking care of them. Then I wanted to join them. I saw Jesus in them.”
Sister Rose Paul Dhanwar, MC, reflected during the Offertory procession on the symbolic meanings of a candle, crucifix, rosary, pencil, water, wine, and bread as she spoke about the charisms of the Missionaries of Charity.
“May we be a beacon of light shining in the darkness of sin and misery in the world,” she said as candles were placed next to a first-class relic of Mother Teresa.
A sister brought forward a crucifix: “We offer you something, heavenly Father, that is precious to You. Let the crucifix remind us that we are the spouses of Jesus crucified.”
The pencil is a “humble instrument” that God can use “for His great glory.”
Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, had high praise for the sisters who continue Mother Teresa’s legacy in this archdiocese. “We are grateful especially for your witness of prayer and humility, simplicity and service,” he said.
With Mother Teresa’s canonization in Rome Sept. 4, the Church now acknowledges a “trinity of Teresas,” he said. “We have the great mystic and reformer, Teresa of Avila; (and) Theresa of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower, whose Little Way has inspired millions to live lives of holiness by seeing God and occasions for love even in the smallest gestures. Joining, now, these two doctors of the church is St. Teresa of Kolkata.”
He said the Archdiocese of Vancouver holds Mother Teresa close to its heart; she developed a friendship with Archbishop James Francis Carney (1969-1990), who invited her to visit in 1976 and 1988.
A stained glass window of Mother Teresa was installed at the cathedral in 2014 as a sign “of the archdiocese’s devotion to this great and saintly woman.”
The saint brought a message that the dying deserved dignity. “She stooped over, bowed down, before those who were left by the side of the road, seeing in them what others could not see: the dignity of a daughter or a son of God,” said Archbishop Miller.
With the legalization of assisted suicide in Canada, he said, that message is still valuable today.
“Many told her, as they might tell us today: ‘Mother, this is a waste of time,’ yet she persisted in finding people dying on the street and took them home, to her home, so they could die clean, calm, touched gently, naturally, and in peace,” he said.
“Surely if we are to honour her memory today, we are all called to do likewise: to accompany, to respect, and console the suffering and the dying among us.”
