Mother Theresa Gets a Postage Stamp (This is NOT an article from the Onion)

                  Wow, Mother Theresa. She’s a saint. Does that let us off the hook and free us from any impulse to be like her? And she’s famous, she’s on a stamp. If I attach her to my letters, do I get a free ride to heaven? Mother Theresa may be a saint, but that should not be license to dismiss what she did in life.

               The real question worth wondering about whether the U.S. Postal Service knew who she really was when it decided to give her a stamp. Did they know about the letters she sent to George Bush, Sr. and Saddam Hussein back when we were embroiled in the first Iraq war? Here’s what she wrote them in January, 1991:

            “Please choose the way of peace. ... In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.”

Not content with afflicting the powerful in her exhortations against the war that turned out exactly as she predicted it would, Mother Theresa also occasionally afflicted the everyday middle class people of the world. Not only did she take care of homeless lepers, AIDS victims, and casteless outcasts in India, she suggested that they were not really the “poorest of the poor” but that the privileged were often more poor than the people she and her community cared for.

              She also recognized the immediate and concrete call of the Gospel in much the same way that Catholic Workers do, when it comes to actually doing the things Jesus said we should do. She said,

              “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed me, I was homeless and you took me in.' Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked for human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks - but homeless because of rejection.”

        If the postal service had known how she really felt, would they have given her a stamp? More importantly, do they think this stamp lets them off the hook in the business of caring for the community? Stay tuned, things may get interesting.
Peace,
Ruth