CANONISING THE BLESSED-SAINT ?

The Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic Association of Bengal and many more, are hands on hearts, hoping for the last required miracle to happen to make the mother canonised to the already public-passed holiness. The semi-Vatican news agency Zenit.org, dated 23 August, 2007, carried a title: St Teresa of Calcutta this year? This had the sub-title: The Catholic Association of Bengal, A Lay Group Prays for Anticipated Canonization by this year. It has organized huge programmed schedule for this year to push her to the altar of sainthood. The President of the Association has confirmed, “During her life, Mother was a living saint to many. There is no doubt that she is already a 'saint' to many more around the world.” At least that’s what the majority of the world claims. What proof then, more than this public claim, needed to make her one what she already is? What happens even if she is not publicly pronounced by her affiliated Religion to be so? She does not belong now to the minority Catholics but to the human race beyond religion.
Again, “Canonisation not at risk” was the heading of The Telegraph, 26th August, 2007. The Vatican has assured that the path to sainthood will not be affected by her crisis of faith for the four decades of her life soon after she left Loreto Convent to work for the poor. She, a time, did turn away from God. That was normal for being human. We don’t canonise God, but Catholics, facing daily difficulties of life.
Hundreds of miracles have been claimed and reported to the Vatican office to be certified for the final verdict, which the people world at large have affirmed ten years since she died and more so even before, through her actions and witness. The 35,000 pages of documents attest to her virtues and shortcomings. There are over 100 witnesses, which so far none had. The world-society does not need such regulated declaration of sainthood, more so for India to accommodate the freedom to retain the spiritual culture existing in the fibre of the Indian being. This prestigious ‘tag’ on the person who walked the roads of India and abroad, making inroad to the hearts of the millions poor, will remain just that, with no difference what so ever to the ones for whom she is a saint. If this is so, do we need to fret over proving her spiritual ‘excellence’, which was inherent in her human living? Of course no one wants to rob of her Catholic religion-based privilege.
Not that everything was ‘ok’ with her. Different pockets made different allegations from their own perspectives against Teresa of Kolkata. One thing is for sure, no one has a criminal case in the court against her. There are very few charges against her, judging by the calibre of the person, and that too, nobody seems too concerned. That issue does not grip us, when she is already a saint. To most of the Indian minds, except those Catholics who are educated with the procedure for the cause of the canonisation, the whole hoping for the last miracle to make Teresa a saint, is a tragedy or better a disgrace that we are still searching for her holiness, to be confirmed by a religious structural requirement of a minority Christians. History tells, saints are in the books of the bourgeois and the bureaucracy who follow a set pattern to be fulfilled, where money and might play their equal game. For the case of Mother, neither of them needed. Her nomination to sainthood list, by the enthused Indian Catholics, is also a play of pride that adds to the number. Are we looking for the best person among the listless Indians who have been saints in their lives and even after? We have no right to smear and tear that which is on the pedestal of charity and love, only to prove the power of institutionalisation. Probably, she is always the potential person mentioned, if not often quoted, in peaceful speeches from the Pope to the pedestrian preacher with a sense of satisfaction. Are we going to make her an instrument of manipulation in our own hands or of the institution?
Regardless of whether one believes in sainthood or not, Teresa of Kolkata has a national and international stature and has gripped the public heart and mind for her saintly ways. Why then choose to go with the miracle list of three out of thousands, after the one on ‘Monika Besra’, for the Vatican to give the verdict, and we wait for her to be a saint?
Most people will find it hard to believe that canonising is a strenuous process, with all the requirements to be fulfilled. Yet, exceptions are not rare, even in this particular case of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata. We know, soon after her death, the Congregation for Sainthood Causes (CCS) received an avalanche of requests, even from the Archbishop of Kolkata then, for initiating the process of ‘making her a saint’ and dispensing from the requirement of five years of waiting to start inquire into the life, virtues and reputation of her sanctity. Why such ‘rush’? Heaven can wait? It was already by 2001, that the Acts of the Diocese and Inquiry with 80 volumes, each with around 450 pages, was sent to Rome, just to make her ‘blessed-saint’.
We do have no criticism or charges against her, but with the way the whole prayers pouring down on her grave, interceding for mother’s own sake. She need not be the object of our needs and subjective motives to be fulfilled. True, she cared for the marginalised but did little to change the social structures. She gave witness in doing, a grass-root change and not structural transformation first. If she was satiating the thirst of Jesus for love by balancing between prayer and action, we, then, should be praying for ourselves, for our conversion and not hers; have we moved enough to rake up the dirt under those lying unattended? May be not one cheep; forget the suffering servant needing our charity in deeds as hers. Teresa of Kolkata is going to be proclaimed universally a saint soon, in all probability as in the words of the President of the Catholic Association of Bengal, “Sainthood for Mother Teresa in a real sense may not be far away as many miracles are happening by her intercession.” Indian culture on the whole does not need this fitting announcement to make her a saint with such precedence that is so racy. We don’t need to be scared if no last miracle happens, for the sacred is in her, regardless of Church affiliation. We have recognised her holiness and we need not be informed, but to reaffirm. The Church has to affirm so universally, and that’s what the Church is going to do officially.
Part of the problem is we don’t understand what making of a saint consists of, at least from the theoretical level, if not from the experiential. But why should this be so? Is there difference in seeing and sensing the person who lives as a holy, loving and committed person that we commonly understand of? Let her remind us, she was committed to life that leads to God and not to ‘levels’. It is not so much compassion through her dedicated saintly life that we honour, but the living truth that world has ever known: the innate potential for good in every human kind. It is the respect, worth and dignity for the individual, the loneliest, the most wretched, the dying destitute, the abandoned lepers, received Christ’s compassion devoid of condescension. Serving Christ in woman and man, she transcended all barriers of race, religion and nationality, welcoming everyone, poor and rich alike, without distinctions. This is a sign of harmony and unity that Mother has brought to us.
What would she have done about this ‘candidacy’ if she were to be alive? Well, that’s not our point now. But the present time should serve us for some very objective criteria for proclaiming who is a saint and who is not. For this, the world is the judge, not our inclined emotions and ‘hero’ admiration. We always need past achievers for us to emulate. Yet, that’s not what is going to make us saints too. Instead, it’s the individual person, through his/her own charism that the spiritual holiness is achieved. We have no right to qualify others as saint by our own standards. Otherwise, judging by this criteria with all the personal and group muck surrounding it, the process of ‘making’ saints in the fabric of the Church, will sink into the oblivion. Let me remind all in Teresa’s own words, “Holiness is not luxury of the few but a simple duty for me and for you.”