Mother Teresa died 21 years ago. CNS photo

The Register Archives: Mother Teresa offers lesson for teachers

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  • September 5, 2018

St. Mother Teresa died Sept. 5, 1997 at age 87 after a lifetime of work with the poor in India. The founder of the Missionaries of Charity made several visits to Canada over the years and, in 1988, also recorded a message for the 100th anniversary of the Edmonton Catholic Schools. Here’s that message as reprinted in the pages of The Register after her death 21 years ago.


Let us thank God for His great love in having blessed Edmonton with the gift of giving so much joy, so much care and so much love to all those in the 100 years, educating and preparing the young people to know to love and to serve God.

In doing what you have done all these years, it is the great gift of God to you and through you to your country. So, one of the most important things is: let us thank God for His great love because education is what we need most. Teaching the truth, the love and living of that truth and continuing to love.

The whole future of your country depends on what our young people received because they cannot give what they do not have. And so let us thank the teachers who have taught them and let us implore teachers to continue to give that love and care.

Today, as we know, all of us, how much suffering and much pain there is in the world. Something is missing. What’s missing is that tender love, that concern that God teaches us so very clearly: “Learn with me because I am meek and hunger at heart.”

We need that meekness for each other, with each other, as we need humility because humility gives us a clean heart and a clean heart can see God. And when we see God in each other we will love one another as God loves each one of us.

That’s all that Jesus came on Earth to give us, that good news that God loves us and that He wants us to love each other, as He loves each one of us. That is why the work of teachers is so important, to teach young people to love and allow each other to be loved.

Love, works of love, are always works of peace and if you remember, let every teacher remember, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren,” Jesus said, “you do to Me. If you receive a child in My name, you receive Me.”

You just think how many children have been received during these 100 years in Edmonton. How many have gone through, how many have received that tender care of the teachers.

So, I think the first thing Jesus will say to them when they come home to God is “I was a little child and you received Me. Come blessed of my Father and serve the kingdom.”

So I believe that on a day like this, let us thank God and let us also make a very strong resolution to be His love, His compassion, His presence to all those young people, so they can look up and see only Jesus, so that they can open their hearts and soul and hear the voice of God speaking through you to them.

And who can help live up to at teaching of Christ is Our Lady, the mother of Jesus, as she says in Cana, “Do what He tells you.”

And they had to do a very simple thing, just fill up with water, and we know that this was the first miracle, we know what happened. So let us also keep close to her. She is the mother of tender love. She will keep us for Him. She will guide us. She will protect us and she will obtain a special blessing for these teachers and what they have done in these 100 years. And also she will bless you so that even greater things will be the proof of all those who have dedicated their knowledge, their joy and the peace of Christ to those children, the young people who passed through.

My prayer for you all will be that you really grow in the love of God through this beautiful work that you do, and through this love of God that you grow in holiness because holiness is a simple duty for us all. If we only use that simple means that He has given us, to be only whole for Him, through Mary the mother of Jesus.

God bless you all and I will pray for you.

(To explore more from The Catholic Register Archive, go to catholicregister.org/archive)

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