The miracles of Mother Teresa, approved by the Church

The miracles of Mother Teresa. Hundreds of Catholics have been declared saints in recent decades, but few with the applause accorded to Mother Teresa, who will be canonized by Pope Francis on Sunday, largely in recognition of her service to the poor in India. When I was coming of age, she was the living saint, ”says Bishop Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "If you said, 'Who is anyone today who would really embody the Christian life?' you would turn to Mother Teresa of Calcutta “.

Mother Teresa's Miracles, Approved by the Church: Who Was It?

Mother Teresa's Miracles, Approved by the Church: Who Was It? Born Agnes Bojaxhiu to an Albanian family in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, Mother Teresa became world famous for her devotion to the poor and dying. The religious congregation she founded in 1950, the Missionaries of Charity, now has more than 4.500 religious sisters all over the world. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her life of service. Humanitarian work alone, however, is not enough for canonization in the Catholic Church. Normally, a candidate must be associated with at least two miracles. The idea is that a person worthy of holiness must be demonstrably in heaven, actually interceding with God on behalf of those in need of healing.

Some stories of miracles in recent years

In the case of Mother Teresa, a woman in India whose stomach cancer has disappeared and a man in Brazil with brain abscesses who woke up from a coma both attributed their dramatic recovery to prayers offered to the nun after her death in 1997. . A saint is someone who has lived a life of great virtue, whom we look upon and admire, ”says Bishop Barron, a frequent commentator on Catholicism and spirituality. “But if that is all we emphasize, we flatten holiness. The saint is also someone who is now in heaven, who lives in this fullness of life with God. And the miracle, to put it bluntly, is proof of this. "

Monica Besra, 35, poses with a portrait of Mother Teresa at her home in Nakor village, 280 miles north of Calcutta, in December 2002. Besra said prayers to Mother Teresa led to her recovery from abdominal cancer. something documented by the Vatican as a miracle.

The miracles of Mother Teresa. Some miracle stories in recent years have involved non-medical situations, such as when a small pot of rice prepared in the kitchen of a church in Spain in 1949 proved to be enough to feed nearly 200 hungry people, after the cook prayed to a local saint. . However, more than 95% of the cases cited in support of a canonization involve recovery from the disease.

The miracles of Mother Teresa: the Church and the procedure of the miracle

Diehard rationalists are unlikely to see these cases as evidence of a "miracle," even if they acknowledge that they have no alternative explanations. Devout Catholics, on the other hand, readily attribute such events to God, no matter how mysterious they may be.

“In a way, it's a little arrogant of us to say, 'Before I can believe in God, I need to understand God's ways,'” says Martin. "For me, it's a little crazy, that we can fit God in our minds."

The canonization procedures have undergone a series of reforms in recent years. Pope Francis instituted changes to make the promotion of a candidate less prone to organized lobbying efforts. Indeed, the Vatican authorities routinely interview at least some people who doubt someone's suitability for holiness. (Among those contacted during the early stages of Mother Teresa's review was Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a highly critical appraisal of Mother Teresa's work, calling her "a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud").

The requirement of miracles has also changed over time. In 1983, John Paul II reduced the number of miracles required for holiness from three to two, one for the first stage - beatification - and one more for canonization.

Some Catholic leaders have called for the demand for miracles to be eliminated altogether, but others are strongly opposed. Bishop Barron says that without the miracle requirement for holiness, the Catholic Church would only offer watered down Christianity.

The nun so widely revered for her spiritual purity

"This is the problem with a liberal theology," says Barron. “It tends to tame God, to make everything a little too clean, simple, orderly and rational. I like how the miraculous shakes us from too easy a rationalism. We will state everything grandly about modernity and the sciences, but I am not going to state that this is all there is in life “.

In a sense, Mother Teresa's holiness can speak to Catholics today in a way that previous canonizations did not. Martin, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, notes that in a posthumous collection of his private diaries and letters, Mother Teresa: Like Be My Light, the nun so widely revered for her spiritual purity acknowledged that she does not personally feel God's presence.

“In my soul I feel that terrible pain of loss”, he wrote, “of God who does not want me, of God who is not God, of God who does not exist”.

Martin says that Mother Teresa faced this pain by saying to God, "Even if I don't feel you, I believe in you." This declaration of faith, he says, makes his example relevant and meaningful to contemporary Christians who also struggle with doubt.

"Ironically," he says, "this more traditional saint becomes a saint for modern times."