“When Joseph and I ‘lost’ our child in
the Temple, in the city of Jerusalem, we
were afraid and sad.”
The Answer Becomes Clear
My third time of acquaintance with
Mother Teresa came through Fr. Edward
Farrell, who was on the faculty of Sacred
Heart for seventeen years, 1961-1978.
Through chance or perhaps through
God’s mysterious ways, Father Farrell was
traveling in 1972 from Chicago to Detroit
by plane and happened to have a seat assignment next to Mother Teresa.
Thus began, although unofficially,
Mother Teresa’s connection with Detroit.
When Cardinal John Dearden, archbishop of Detroit, invited me to consider
working with Fr. Bohdan Kosicki as vicaress for religious, I was “surprised by
the Spirit,” to use one of Father Farrell’s
book titles. This invitation was new and
unfamiliar ground for me but provided
me with “amazing graces” and untold rich
experiences.
One of those experiences was the opportunity to participate in a discernment
process. Mother Teresa entered my life
once more.
Cardinal Dearden had invited me and
several other archdiocesan directors to
gather for lunch with Mother Teresa in
his Palmer Park home. This was to be the
beginning of a discernment process about
the canonical establishment of the Missionaries of Charity within the Archdiocese of Detroit.
The following week, Cardinal Dearden
and I continued the conversation in his
office. We quietly wondered what God’s
will was for the sisters and the archdiocese. Psalm 27 became our prayer at that
moment.
The Lord is my light and my salvation . . .
Hear, O Lord, the sound of my call . . .
“WE QUIETLY WONDERED
WHAT GOD’S WILL WAS
FOR THE SISTERS AND THE
ARCHDIOCESE. PSALM 27
BECAME OUR PRAYER.”
Though an army encamp against me, tory was another great woman, Rosa Parks,
my heart will not fear . . .
awaiting a parishioner to walk her over to
Show me O Lord, your way . . .
the church.
Following that prayer, we were able to
I never met Dr. King. I never met Doroverbalize a description of what we could thy Day. At St. Agnes I met Rosa Parks!
expect of Mother Teresa in Detroit. She That day, I felt immensely blessed to have
was stubborn; my Irish ancestors would walked with two great women who had at
have called her “bull headed.” In the con- heart my own deep, caring, and loving detext of God’s work, we
could say that she had
a single, clear vision,
“STAY WITH US [JESUS], AND THEN WE
focused and unafraid,
SHALL BEGIN TO SHINE LIKE YOU SHINE;
“though an army encamp against her, she
. . . THE LIGHT O JESUS, WILL BE ALL
will not fear.”
FROM YOU, NONE OF IT WILL BE OURS.”
The woman who
-FROM A PRAYER RECITED EACH DAY BY ST. TERESA OF CALCUTTA
earlier sat with us at
the lunch table was a
tyrant, a blessed tyrant for mercy and com- sires for the people of Detroit.
passion, who sees Jesus in everyone. In
A year before, in May1978, Father Farthe words of the psalmist, “She waits for rell was appointed pastor of St. Agnes Parthe Lord with courage;” she was a stout- ish. There he continued his pastoral care
hearted tyrant.
and spiritual direction of the Missionaries
The cardinal knew his answer: “Yes, we of Charity. Several seminarians performed
will invite Mother Teresa to the archdio- their weekly apostolic experience with the
cese.” The canonical process began. On Missionaries. They accompanied the sisJuly 23, 1977, the Missionaries of Charity ters in home visits to sick and abandoned
were born in Detroit.
people in the neighborhood.
Mother and Rosa Parks—In One Day!
Their first home was the former convent of the IHM sisters next to St. Agnes
Parish in Detroit’s Virginia Park neighborhood. On the day the Missionaries moved
in, hundreds of visitors gathered around
the parish and in the church for a liturgy
to welcome the sisters. Many hoped to get
a glimpse of this woman about whom they
had read and heard, Mother Teresa.
She had already left the convent for the
church when a group of about fifty people
pounded on the front door of the rectory,
demanding to see Mother Teresa: “Let us
in. Let us see Mother Teresa.”
I think they doubted my words when
I told them that she was already in the
church. My determination was as strong
as theirs; they believed she was in the rectory and I insisted she wasn’t. Finally they
listened when I told the mob to go to the
church and they disassembled.
The surprise for me that day was that
when I locked the door and walked
through the rectory to the church, I saw
sitting quietly in the living room of the rec-
Two Seminary Visits
That was not the end of my encounters
with Mother Teresa. She visited Sacred
Heart Seminary—twice. In the summer of
1979, when the parishioners of St. Agnes
were enjoying their annual parish picnic on our seminary grounds, they were
joined by Father Farrell, Mother Teresa,
and several friends of the Missionaries of
Charity. Later on in the week, Mother appeared again on the seminary grounds to
visit Father in his office. She was a joyful,
happy, and “thirsty” tyrant for Jesus. She
knew Jesus was “her kind of Tyrant,” in
love with her and all of the human family.
This account ends where it began—in
the heart of Jesus:
“Stay with us [Jesus], and then we shall
begin to shine like you shine; . . . the light
O Jesus, will be all from you, none of it
will be ours.”
Sr. Mary Finn, HVM, a member of the Home
Visitors of Mary religious community, has served
on the faculty of Sacred Heart since 1969.
shms.edu
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