It was not a sermon, a grand gesture or even a conversation that first stopped Sister Joseph in her tracks. It was the way Mother Teresa made the Sign of the Cross, reports Catholic Voice.
More than five decades after meeting Mother Teresa as a 19-year-old, the leader of the Missionaries of Charity still traces much of her vocation to those early encounters — and to a lesson about seeing God in the person directly in front of you.
Sr Mary Joseph (second from the left) assumed leadership in 2022 as the fourth superior general of the Missionaries of Charity. She is pictured with other Sisters and Archbishop Christopher Prowse. PHOTO: Catholic Voice.
“I was so struck because I used to make it without thinking what I was doing,” Sister Joseph says.
“In her action, even as a young sister, I felt there was so much faith, faith in the invisible reality we call God.
“For me, he was an idea, he was not a person. For Mother, he was a person with whom she lived, she moved.”
Speaking with Archbishop Christopher Prowse during a visit to the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese, Sister Joseph recalls Mother Teresa’s willingness to undertake the most ordinary work alongside the sisters.
“Mother was so down to earth. She could pick up a broom and sweep the house,” she says.
For the young Sister Joseph, watching Mother Teresa personally care for poor and sick people challenged her understanding of faith.
“I used to wonder, this is a European sister coming to India, touching the feet of the poor.
“Perhaps the reason I’m still here is because of that memory.”
One encounter in Calcutta left an even deeper impression.
At a home for dying and destitute people, those brought in from the streets were bathed, shaved and given clean clothes.
Mother Teresa had arranged for the words “The body of Christ” to be placed above the area where people were first laid after being brought in from the street, helping new sisters make the connection between the person before them and Christ.
On her second day, Sister Joseph saw a man lying there.
“I saw this man, flies all around him, covered with dirt and full of sores and with a terrible stench.
“I looked at him and I wanted to escape, I wanted to run away because it was a horrible sight.
“But then I looked up and I saw written, ‘The body of Christ.’ I said, ‘This the body of Christ?’ It was too much for me.
“I stood looking at what was written and the man lying there. It went so deep in my heart that this could be Christ.”
The encounter followed her into prayer that evening.
“I kept on looking at Christ in the Holy Eucharist exposed. I kept on asking, that man lying in the dirt, he’s Christ?
“And I remember Mother always used to tell us, ‘Make the connection. When you come for adoration, ask Jesus to cleanse your eyes so that you may look at him and see Jesus in him.’
“This was an experience that I will never forget.”
That attention to the individual remains one of Sister Joseph’s enduring memories.
“It was never a crowd of people, always that one person, a whole attention on that one person.
“Those of us who have lived with Mother, always the presence and the memory of Mother accompanies us throughout our lives.”
That spirit continues in Queanbeyan, where the sisters teach catechesis in six schools, run sacramental programs and visit vulnerable people each Saturday with food, prayer and a Gospel message.
“Food is not [what] they miss,” one sister says. “They miss the sisters if we are not coming. Our presence makes them feel better.”
Returning to Australia after 52 years, Sister Joseph sees a country that has changed.
“I see Australia has become much more secular,” she says. “And it’s a pain for me because these were my first years of religious life and I loved Australia because the people were so warm, especially in Melbourne.”
Yet Sister Joseph sees hope in a continuing spiritual hunger.
“There is a thirst for God in Australia that cannot be quenched by material things,” she says. “Only God can fill up that emptiness in us.”
Her final prayer is that Australians “may never forget God” and “may rediscover their humanity by discovering God”.
This article by Jeanine Doyle was published in Catholic Voice, the publication of the Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn,