Have you seen the face of Jesus in others? If so, when and how? Have you ever been able to see Christ in yourself?When I think about the summer right after my freshman year of college, I don’t think of relaxing by the pool. I don’t think of beach days, or summer love. I don’t think of barbecues. I remember the day I woke up in India—hot, sweating, jet-lagged, and surrounded by a mosquito net—to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. It was 4:30 AM. We would leave in an hour for our first day of working with the Missionaries of Charity.
I have always felt a special connection to Blessed Mother Teresa. We share a birthday, and I grew up to be just as short as she was. When the woman who ran my Bible study told me that she was leading a trip to Kolkata, India, to continue Mother Teresa’s work, I knew I was supposed to be on that trip. Eight months and about twenty hours of flying later, it was my first day.
I decided to work at Prem Dan, meaning “Gift of Love,” a home for the sick, dying, and disabled. Immediately, I was thrown into a whirlwind of confusion and disarray, hard physical labor and even harder emotional burdens. I felt lost. I felt so useless. I had come to India to make a difference and to help. What help could I be with a hundred women yelling for a multitude of things in a language I didn’t understand? I mulled that thought over every day at Mother Teresa’s tomb, during Mass at the Mother House, and during our daily holy hour.
As time passed, though, I saw my purpose in the form of a special friendship formed with one of the patients, Niruala. Bright and vibrant in a place where there was a lot of despair, we connected by making faces at each other and mimicking actions. If she danced, I danced. If I stuck my tongue out, so did she. The love she had helped to release my own. No longer was a task just physical labor, but one of pouring out as much love as possible through my hands. I started to realize that love has so many forms. Sometimes love was feeding patients. Other times, it was helping them use the toilet. When I released myself from holding back my own love, I saw my relationships with Niruala, fellow missionaries, God, and myself grow. I was no longer afraid of letting love out.
I went to India hoping to change things, to make a difference. And isn’t that the reason most of us go on mission trips—to fix things for people who have no ability to repay us? But, what I realized is that India helped to fix me. Yes, I did a lot for other people. I went up and kissed a leper everyone else tried to avoid. I lived the corporal works of mercy in feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. But, in loving with everything I had, I released in myself a power I didn’t know was there and began to heal my own heart. And isn’t that what the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi means when it says, “for it is in giving that we receive?”
On my last day at Prem Dan, I was beside myself with emotions. Niruala was ill and I would never know how it turned out for her. At the very end of the day, I grabbed a Missionary of Charity and asked her to please translate my goodbyes to the one who started my own healing. I told Niruala that I was leaving, and that I didn’t think I’d ever be back. Immediately, as sick as she was, she propped herself up, held my face, and kissed me. Nothing ever before or since had a greater impact on me. For so many weeks, I had felt that I was only a drop in the ocean. That even with everything I did, it didn’t change anything. But it did for one little woman who liked to dance.
On my trip to Kolkata I saw Jesus in the faces of the people society forgot to love. But, the really transformative thing was my own ability to recognize Jesus in myself. In a life full of self-consciousness and perfectionism, that has been very hard for me. I never thought I would mean that much to Niruala or the other workers at Prem Dan. To pour out my own love and receive theirs truly opened my heart to receive God’s love.
God works through each and every one of us. I hope one day we can all see our own beauty and worth in the eyes of our Heavenly Father, and the worth of his other children who surround us.
—Marie I.
Have you seen the face of Jesus in others? If so, when and how? Have you ever been able to see Christ in yourself?
Even though we may feel like just one tiny part of an immense whole, God values our existence and how we complete it. Spend some time allowing yourself to feel his love working in you and through you.