Similar saints, continents apart
Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, later known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, was born in 1910. Mother Cabrini lived in the United States after World War I and died in 1917, so we know the two women never met. But it is completely accurate to say that Mother Teresa knew Mother Cabrini spiritually.
It was in September of 1946, while Mother Teresa was a Sister of Loreto working as headmistress in a school in Darjeeling, that she experienced what she described as “the call within the call”: Jesus made it clear to her that she was to live among the poor of Calcutta and to help them.
That same September Mother Teresa read a biography of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Mother Cabrini had been canonized only two months before. Mother Teresa wrote to her spiritual director, Fr. Celest Van Exem, “After reading the life of St. Cabrini — the thought kept coming — why can’t I do for Him in India what she did for Him in America– why was she able to identify herself so much with the Americans as to become one of them?” (Come, Be My Light, pp 46-47).
Mother Teresa didn’t want to leave Calcutta any more than Mother Cabrini wanted to give up her plans to go to China. But both women wanted the same thing with all their hearts: to serve Jesus in whatever way he asked. And so Mother Teresa left Loreto with 5 rupees, wearing a simple sari, trusting — like Mother Cabrini did when she boarded the Bourgogne to come to New York — that wherever God asked her to go, whatever he asked her to do, was exactly what she needed to do.
St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Frances Cabrini, pray for us.
