Scottish Catholic Observer

By Amanda Connelly

Ahead of her canonisation this Sunday Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, told the SCO about the time he meet the saint to be many years ago and how it changed his life.

As a young seminarian, he had the opportunity to meet Mother Teresa after going along to an early morning Mass with fellow seminarians from both the Scots and American colleges. Setting off at six o’clock on a dark November morning, the group arrived at centre which Bishop Keenan described as ‘almost like a centre in Calcutta,’ with windowless breezeblock rooms and corrugated iron roofs where the sisters lived and worked.

Entering into a sparsely decorated little chapel, with the only light in the place coming from the Blessed Sacrament on the altar, Bishop Keenan sat along the wall, next to the Italian prime minister, before noticing that among the Missionaries of Charity present was Mother Teresa herself.

“She was sitting down there, kneeling in a wee ball, just adoring the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament,” he said. After half an hour of adoration, Mass was said before all the guest were then ushered outside and into the light, where Mother Teresa took the time to speak to those present,” Bishop Keenan said.

“She just went along and she shook our hand and said hello, and gave us a wee Miraculous Medal, but when she got to the end of the line she said ‘you boys stay there because I want to talk to you after I’ve talked to everybody else.’ She went down the line and said very quickly hello to the prime minister and president and a few other dignatories there. Then she came back up to us and then she just started chatting as if she had all the time in the world.

“She was kind of playful, kind of humorous, but her humour was kind of directly evangelical. She pointed to me and smiled and said ‘I want you to become one of my Missionaries of Charity priests,’ which kind of took me by surprise!

“Then as the conversation went on, she said ‘I want to ask you, do you have Eucharistic Adoration in your seminaries?’ I was very proud because at that point, we had just introduced Friday evening Eucharistic Adoration in the Scots College from just after supper till about nine o’clock. Proudly, I said to her ‘oh yeah Mother Teresa, we’ve got Eucharistic Adoration every Friday evening now,’ and she smiled and pointed her finger at me and said ‘you tell your rector everyday!’ Then she started laughing, but you knew she was laughing to be very engaging—what she was saying she was deadly serious about,” he added.

Her simple and down to earth manner was something that, as with many others, left a lasting impact on Bishop Keenan. “She was unnervingly down to earth,” he said. “I remember thinking that this was just like meeting any other parish sister.

What struck me was a month or so prior to that, we’d met Pope John Paul and when we walked in to meet him, there was just a palpable aura around St John Paul—it was like a forcefield, you just knew you were in the presence of this colossal figure.

By contrast, Mother Teresa was just so, so ordinary. I remember thinking that saints came in all shapes and sizes—there were two people both equally holy: one with this enormous global presence, and the other with this very simple everyday attitude.”

The experience Bishop Keenan had of meeting Mother Teresa did not just impact positively on his own life, however. A few months after his meeting, a doctor friend suggested he meet with patients of his, who were travelling to Rome, including a couple with two children suffering from a serious disability that left them with a diminished life expectancy.

The family, who were not religious, met with the bishop, who gave them the Miraculous Medal he received from Mother Teresa. 25 years on, the two children are alive and their mother keeps the Miraculous Medal by their beds, praying to Mother Teresa and Our Lady whenever she is worried. “So, the whole thing lasted well beyond Mother Teresa,” Bishop Keenan said.

The experience of meeting the seemingly ordinary nun has had a lasting impact on Bishop Keenan over the years. “It’s going to be funny to see someone being canonised as a saint and seeing the St Peter’s Basilica packed and Pope Francis come out on the balcony and this big tapestry of Mother Teresa lowered down, knowing I actually spoke to her just like anyone would speak to a fellow parishioner,” he said.

“She said playfully, but invitingly, I want you to be one of my priests. Obviously I didn’t become a Missionary of Charity, but it has never left me that idea, and I think that even though you can’t be one of those priests, we are all called to be missionaries and we’re all called to be missionaries of God’s love.

“I think probably I did reflect upon that, and it really did influence the way I try to be a priest, just to be someone who tries to pass on God’s love as she did.

“You couldn’t meet Mother Teresa in person without her words remaining with you forever.”

—This story ran in full in the September 2 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.