Loving and laughing while on Kolkata mission

A girl named Tuli could not see, could not speak, could not get up out of her wheelchair.

“But whenever we’d have music, she’d bob her head,” said Olivia Evers, a University of Missouri (MU) student who’s active at the St. Thomas More Newman Center in Columbia.

“I could take her hands and dance,” Miss Evers marveled. “I could picture us dancing in heaven. God is so good that he will allow that to happen!”

Miss Evers was one of 11 students and five Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) missionaries from the Columbia Newman Center who spent a month serving with the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India, this summer.

For each, it was a life-altering tutorial in entrusting every moment to God and his providence, recognizing his presence in every person, serving him unreservedly and with joy, and experiencing the fullness of his pure love.

The Missionaries of Charity, founded by St. Teresa of Kolkata, seek out people who are in greatest need and minister to them with the same meticulous care as one would show Christ.

People come from all over the world to spend a few weeks or a few months volunteering in the 19 homes the sisters operate in Kolkata.

“My favorite feeling is showing people how much God loves them,” said Miss Evers. “Like going to India and seeing people doing little things with great love.”

“Mother”

Joining and participating with the servant pilgrims was Father Andrew Auer, associate pastor of the Newman Center parish.

“Kolkata stays with you,” he stated. “I’m excited to see all the ways the students who went there are going to bless other people.”

He struggled to describe the joy of offering Mass in the chapel where Mother Teresa had spent so much time in prayer, and where her earthly remains now await the resurrection.

“Mother would have been the first to tell you that the Mass is far more important than her,” the priest noted. “But it was such a great thing to be able to celebrate Mass in her presence and ask for her heavenly intercession.”

The chapel is in her congregation’s international headquarters, a large, nondescript building on a busy street corner in a city of 15 million people.

“In India, she’s not Teresa, she’s ‘Mother’ — Capital ‘M’ — the mother of the whole nation,” Fr. Auer noted.

Each day, he would spend a few minutes in the chapel, silently praising God and relishing St. Teresa’s company in the Communion of Saints.

“It was so special to place my head on her tomb and talk to her and love her and thank her for what she started and for what she continues to sustain from her side of heaven,” he said.

“All about love”

Organizers began planning the India mission a year in advance.

The students who went raised the money and lined up prayer support back home.

In Kolkata, they took up residence in community at the Nirmala Sisters convent, a house of hospitality for volunteers.

The servant pilgrims would rise at 5 a.m. each day and then walk for 20 minutes through gridlock to the Missionaries of Charity Motherhouse for Mass and a multilingual Rosary with the sisters and volunteers from around the world.

“Traveling through the city was so exhausting,” said MU student Amy Winkler. “You want to care for everyone you see, but that’s not possible.”

“Everything is in full force,” Miss Evers stated. “Then, at the Motherhouse, you can breathe.”

After a simple breakfast, the group would head out by bus or tuk-tuk to their separate work sites — different homes in Kolkata staffed by Mother Teresa’s sisters for people in dire need.

MU student Kevin Hogan said those prayerful moments with the sisters were sacred.

“We got to go to Mass with the sisters, and we got to receive Christ’s love and be imitators of him, and go out to Kolkata and show that love to all the people we came into contact with,” he stated.

MU student Justin Francka, a graduate of St. Martin School in St. Martins and Helias Catholic High School in Jefferson City, served at a home for people who are dying and destitute.

“There was a moment in particular,” he recalled. “Fr. Andrew, a few other people and I were praying the Prayers for the Dead for a person who had just died.

“For me, it was a reminder of my own mortality and that none of us are getting out of here alive,” he stated. “Ultimately, we’re not made for this world. We’re made for heaven, and working there helped me realize how thin the veil is.”

Little things

Mr. Hogan; MU student Thomas McCauley, who is a graduate of St. Stanislaus School and Blair Oaks High School, both in Wardsville; and MU student Julia Hasbrouck worked at House of Love, a home for men and women with physical and developmental disabilities.

“It was all about love,” said Miss Hasbrouck. “My biggest takeaway was loving God and loving others, and that I had a greater capacity for both than I thought before I went.”

The sisters once asked her to trim a resident’s toenails.

“Something like that, which the sisters would put so much care into,” said Miss Hasbrouck. “When they ask you to do that because the woman you’re caring for can’t, who am I to say no?”

Mr. McCauley saw how the residents internalized the love the sisters lavished on them.

“Seeing how joyful they were despite any disabilities they had, was incredible for me,” he said. “The love of Christ was alive and well inside every one of the people there.”

Mr. McCauley was happy also to get to work with some of the home’s residents who volunteered to assist.

“They had a lot of joy when they got to help each other out,” he noted.

Miss Evers worked at the House of Peace, a home for women with physical and developmental disabilities, most of whom who could not speak.

“One of my biggest takeaways was the humility of the sisters,” she said. “The way they carried out their menial tasks with such great love throughout the day.”

She was amazed at how precisely the sisters folded the sheets each morning.

“I realized they love the people they serve so much, they want to give them the absolute best,” she recalled. “Even though some of the people were blind and couldn’t even see them, they wanted them to have perfectly folded sheets.

“They were doing something with so much love, even though the people they were doing it for couldn’t possibly thank them or even recognize what was being done for them,” she said.

The sisters always prioritized relationship over efficiency.

“Like Mother Teresa would say, ‘doing small things with great love,’ and doing that in every aspect of the things you do,” she said. “When you do this for someone else, it means so much more. And when you do it for the Lord, it means infinitely more.”

Everything with Jesus

Miss Winkler had been leading a Bible study at Newman but knew she was short on zeal and on trust that God was working through her.

“Working with the Missionaries of Charity will teach you faith and love and trust,” she said. “The faith they have that God will provide for them every day was most life-changing for me.”

She noticed how seriously the sisters take Jesus’s command to love every human being — no exceptions — from conception to natural death.

“They showed such great love for the outcasts of society — young people, old people, everyone in between,” she said. “They cared for everybody.”

Miss Winkler once heard a conversation between two of the sisters — one older, one younger and likely still “in training.”

“The older sister said, ‘Do everything with Jesus,’” Miss Winkler recalled. “So, you’re doing every task of the day with Jesus, interiorly in your heart.”

That was something Miss Winkler knew God wanted her to bring back home with her.

“He’s in every task,” she said. “God can sanctify everything he has you do. Now, whether it’s homework, walking to class, everything, I set out to do it with God.”

The least of these

Mr. Francka said the friends he’s made at the Columbia Newman Center helped him become someone who could serve on pilgrimage to India.

“Being around so many faithful people who encouraged me and taught me how to pray more deeply — that has really changed me,” he said.

“Spending time with Jesus in the Eucharist and allowing him to melt my heart in all the ways it had grown cold — that has also changed me,” he stated.

One day while he was working at a home for the dying in Kolkata, a resident asked for help shaving his head.

Everyone else was heading to Mass, but Mr. Francka had already been, so he said “yes.”

“I could hear every word of the Mass,” he recalled. “Hearing the words of consecration — ‘This is my Body’ — while working with this man reminded me of Jesus’s words, ‘When you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.’

“At that moment, I knew, Jesus was in this man, and I was serving him,” he said.

Heart of Jesus

Two words are painted on the wall next to every crucifix in homes run by the Missionaries of Charity: “I THIRST” (John 19:28).

“He thirsts for our love,” said Mr. Hogan. “All the sisters would point to those two words and how special they are. I think of the story of Mother Teresa being at the foot of a crucifix and hearing those words.

“Christ thirsts for our love,” he stated. “For us to love him back as he loves us.”

That’s not something people can fully accomplish in this life.

“You love him fully in the next life when we love him in heaven,” he said. “But on earth, the best way to grow close to that is by trying to love him and also loving the people around us.”

Mr. Hogan can think of no better example than the things Mother Teresa did to show Christ’s love.

St. Teresa (1910-97) grew up in Albania and answered God’s call to religious life and to serve in the missions.

She was sent to India, where she embarked on a fruitful and satisfying life as a teacher.

Then she received what she called her “call within a call” — a spiritual experience in which God sent her to serve some of the poorest and most suffering of his people.

After being dispensed from the vows she had taken as a Sister of Loreto, she began a congregation of sisters who serve God by lavishing his love and compassion on people who are poor, sick, dying and invisible to most of those around them.

Some 4,500 Missionaries of Charity now staff homes of angelic hospitality for marginalized people all over the world.

Mother Teresa died in 1997.

After a thorough examination had taken place of her life and of miracles attributed to God through her intercession, Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint in 2016.

At least two of the servant pilgrims from Missouri took her name as theirs for Confirmation.

Shared sacrifices

Fr. Auer said that while the servant pilgrims had access to their smart phones for emergencies, they mostly set them aside for the whole month in India.

“We wanted to be fully present to the people we were serving, to the volunteers who were working beside us, to make sure they stayed encouraged,” he said.

It wasn’t about posting photos online or sending up-to-the-minute updates home.

“Instead, we devoted that time and energy to prayer,” he said. “The prayer was the fire that really kept everything going. If we weren’t praying every day, we would have toppled over with exhaustion.”

The servant pilgrims learned to bear their difficulties joyfully and as a community.

“We went through this experience together,” said Mr. Hogan. “There was definitely some hardship involved, but it helped us all grow closer to each other.”

“We developed a special bond there that I believe is unbreakable,” he said. “We will always be friends forever.”

They also connected with people from all over the world who were serving with them at their various work sites.

“It was inspiring to see all these people from different countries and completely different backgrounds, having that same goal of trying to love the best we can,” said Mr. Hogan.

Each evening, the servant pilgrims had dinner, Mass, Adoration and sharing time together.

“There’s no way to process what we went through than to do so in community,” said Miss Hasbrouck.

It was reassuring to know they were experiencing many similar emotions at their separate worksites, she said.

Sundays and Thursdays were days for rest and fun.

They shared laughter and authentic joy with each other and their new friends at their worksites throughout the week.

“Every single day, we laughed with each other,” said Miss Winkler. “It was such a fun group. We’d play cards on the roof of the convent and watch the sun set.”

She and several fellow volunteers from Spain taught Spanish nursery rhymes and dances to the children.

“In so many ways, we were able to connect with one another on a deeper level — where our faith was before, where it is now, what we’re striving to get to,” said Mr. Hogan.

Spilling over

Returning home was bittersweet.

“We were all ready for air-conditioning again, but I’m not a fan of goodbyes,” said Miss Evers.

Most of the girls at House of Peace probably couldn’t understand what it meant that she was leaving.

“I had been reaching out and loving them so much, and I had seen them reach out and love others,” she said.

She tried to express the love that had filled her heart to overflowing, knowing they wouldn’t be able to take it all in.

“I now realize that that’s how God the Father feels,” she said. “We can’t even begin to understand the length and depth and breadth of his love.

“I will be able to see them in heaven and love them,” she stated. “I’m so excited for that.”

Mr. Hogan can’t forget how ardently the Missionaries of Charity clung to Christ in the Eucharist as the foundation of their lives of radical service.

He wants to be like them, here.

“Being like an overflowing reservoir — you’re spilling over so much with faith, with authentic joy, you can’t help but share it,” he said. “And the more I share with others, the more I grow closer to Jesus.

“That’s something I prayed for over there — for people to not see me, but to see Christ and see Christ’s love for them, for whoever we helped out,” he said.

Works in progress

Back at school, Miss Hasbrouck is working on growing in trust and surrendering to God in every aspect of her day and life, as she did while on mission.

“It was so easy to love while we were there,” she observed. “It was so easy to do things that were loving to the people there.

“I’m learning more to love like Jesus and find ways to do that while here,” she said.

Miss Winkler is studying to be a nurse.

“A year from now, I’ll probably be working at people’s bedsides again,” she said. “The prayer I hope God will continue to answer for me is to sanctify the daily work of life.

“I hope to continue finding God in every single aspect of my work — in every joyful moment, in every difficult moment, just like the sisters in Kolkata do,” she said.

Fr. Auer said he prays that the servant pilgrims will never be the same.

That they’ll be different, like the Missionaries of Charity.

“Every day now,” he said, “I think about what’s happening in Kolkata. And I realize that the sisters I was laboring beside, they’re still there, and they’re still doing it.”