Inspired By
Mother Teresa

Meeting Mother Teresa

I met Mother Teresa in 1985 while working as a senior advisor to Oregon senator Mark Hatfield. I had decided to make a pitstop in Calcutta after being on official business in Asia because my life felt like it lacked meaning and I had read about this mysterious, holy woman. I thought maybe meeting her would spark some sort of spiritual conversion in my life. Expecting a tour after our introduction, I was surprised when she instead sent me to volunteer at her Home for the Dying in Kalighat. There I found myself treating the dying, against my initial intentions, only because I was too prideful to decline. The poverty and illness that I experienced there was jarring. I was more than happy to leave India, but was disappointed by the lack of divine intervention I experienced there. It was only after I had returned home that I realized how empty I felt with the material riches of my life in the United States and how fulfilling it was to help Mother Teresa and her sisters in their work.

Unbeknownst to me, by sending me to Kalighat, Mother Teresa had sown the seeds of what would become a life-long mission. She had shown me what she called “Jesus in His distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor,” a description I would come to realize more fully over the course of my life. The joy and selflessness that Mother instilled in her Missionaries of Charity (MCs) and which they exhibited while serving the downtrodden helped me to understand that their vocation was so much more than mere humanitarian work; they were truly serving the person of Christ. I couldn’t help but follow them, and that’s where my journey with Mother began. Slowly but surely, I started spending more time with the MCs in Washington, D.C.

Shortly afterwards, it was brought to my attention that Mother needed assistance navigating the legal hurdles of setting up new missions in the United States, and I was more than happy to volunteer my services. I would go on to serve as Mother’s pro bono legal counsel in the United States for the next twelve years, until her death in 1997. During those twelve years I was blessed with developing a friendship with Mother in which she showed me the importance of truly giving myself in the service of others. That whenever I did something in the loving service of others, I was living out what Mother called the five-finger Gospel from Matthew: “Whatever you did to the least of these my brothers, “you did it to Me.””

Dignity at the End of Life

For Mother Teresa, “You did it to Me,” presented itself in an assortment of ways. Whether it was tending to the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta, or spreading the word of God to the president in the Oval Office, Mother approached every situation as an interaction with Christ. The fame and publicity that she received by the time that I knew her was a drastically different environment than when she had started her religious life, but her personality never changed. She once told me, “If Jesus puts you in the palace, be all for Jesus in the palace. And if He takes your life and cuts it into twenty pieces, all of those pieces are His.” It was this humble attitude towards life and its gifts that she constantly displayed through her words and actions, and which allowed her to have such a massive impact everywhere she went.

Joyous Attitude

But, with her impact came a fair share of suffering. She hated being the center of attention everywhere she went, though she had a very difficult time avoiding it. As she aged her life became laced with immense physical pain from an assortment of injuries, diseases, and even five heart attacks and a stroke. However, what was most painful for Mother was the spiritual suffering she endured through an estrangement with God, known to Catholics as the “dark night of the soul,” which stayed with her for most of her life. Yet through it all, she never complained and kept a joyous attitude, offering up all her emotional, physical, and spiritual suffering for others. She became for me the epitome of what it looks like to age with dignity.

Reverse Loneliness

It was this example that motivated me to found Aging with Dignity. During my time as head of Health and Social Services under Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, I foresaw the massive age wave coming to the United States and wanted to find a way to care for those who lacked resources or family at the end-of-life. In 1996, I founded Aging with Dignity as a way to improve end-of-life care. Mother Teresa sent a letter encouraging this work because she saw the potential for our organization to reverse the curse of loneliness and isolation that plagued so many of the poor and elderly in our nation. Mother always used to say, “The biggest disease is not leprosy or TB. It is loneliness. It is being rejected. It is forgetting joy, love and the human touch.” She showed me how important opposing assisted suicide and promoting hospice care is in preventing the degradation of human life and the spread of loneliness. Little did I know that in only a few short years, Aging with Dignity would become a national organization and eventually lead the nation in advance care planning.

Mother’s Legacy Lives on

Though she passed away only a year after I started Aging with Dignity, her presence is still felt at the organization every day. We’ve helped millions of families navigate the end-of-life using our Five Wishes document so that everyone can have their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs met when the time comes. And we are actively working to fight the spread of physician-assisted suicide in the United States so that palliative and hospice care can get the attention they need. It is because of Mother Teresa’s example that our work exists, and I know that she continues to guide us in the service of others so that everyone will know what it means to love and be loved.