A Review of Mother Teresa: No Greater Love by Nick
Olszyk
Distribution Service: Fathom Events
MPAA Rating, Not rated at the time of this review
USCCB Rating, Not rated at the time of this review
Reel Rating, Three Reels
Being a canonized saint is rare. Being recognized as
such during your own lifetime is rarer still. Being a true saint, totally
devoted to Christ and His radical message of love, while simultaneously being
lauded by the secular world for your actions is the “rarest of the rare,” perhaps
only achieved by the woman who helped “the poorest or the poor.” Mother
Teresa: No Greater Love is a new documentary produced by the Knights of
Columbus, now entering an encore screening from Fathom events due to popular
demand. Much has been said about this titan of the 20th century, and
the film often treads well-worn ground, but it also benefits from the current
day Missionaries of Charity, who provide the most powerful testimony about the one
they just call “Mother.”
No
Greater Love is primarily about St. Teresa’s philosophy and work, but it is
peppered with scenes from her extraordinary life as well. She was born to a
Catholic minority population in 1910s Albania, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
She joined the Loretto Sisters, eventually ending up as a teacher in Calcutta,
India. In a now legendary incident, she was traveling on the train to a retreat
in 1946 when she heard “the call within a call.” It was Jesus asking her to leave
her current life and serve those in most need of her help. She started the
Missionaries of Charity and devoted the rest of her life finding those
abandoned by the world. In India, this meant going to those dying in streets.
In Africa, she found children starving for every meal. In the United States, it
was the drug addicted and AIDS patients.
Despite
her great charity work, her mission was primarily salvific, not philanthropic.
She told her sisters to “see Jesus in the face of the poor” and “bring the love
of Jesus to the poor.” Worse than the hunger for food or medicine was the
hunger for dignity and love. She didn’t start with a blueprint for a hospital
or religious order. She just walked into the streets and embraced the first
dying man she met. She then gave them whatever she had, which was usually not
even enough for herself. For example, her feet were seriously deformed, not
just from the constant walking but only taking the donated shoes nobody else
wanted, which were often ill fit or broken.
The
most compelling aspect of No Greater Love is the frequent interviews with
current-day Missionaries of Charity sisters. They are always smiling, and not
the fake smile of a runway model but the gentle smile of being at total peace
with God and humanity. They live in hundreds of different places, some of which
are quite dangerous. In Mexico, Teresa founded a house in a cartel-controlled
neighborhood. When her sisters were fired upon during their daily work, she marched
right into the leader’s apartment room and demanded that he, a
multi-millionaire armed to the teeth, leave them alone. He complied. Unlike
many other religious orders who are in serious decline, the Missionaries
continue to recruit vocations; many of the sisters were well under forty. This
attraction was not just her social justice work, but its proper place as part
of the mission of the Catholic Church. She insisted on doctrinal and ecclesial fidelity.
Prayer was also essential; sisters are still required to do at least an hour of
eucharistic adoration a day.
Despite
her paradoxical success, she did have detractors, who unfortunately have been
growing louder in the last few decades. She was always hated by many leaders on
due to her strong anti-abortion stance, even proclaiming its evil during a speech
attended by a nervous President Clinton. She has even been criticized for her
charity. Journalist Christopher Hitchens said she “didn’t love the poor, she
loved poverty.” He criticized the supposed poor conditions of her houses
and how she “wasted” money on religious work rather than proper Western style
medical care.
It’s true that
this nearly penniless nun did not give her patients, abandoned on the streets
moments from death, the latest million-dollar chemotherapy treatment. She gave
them something better. She gave them hope, love, and a true death with dignity.
She also took people who were rejected from the mainstream hospitals and mental
institutions. Hitchens never did any of this himself. Underneath this paper-thin
criticism lies all kinds of hidden motives, but, at its heart, is a type of
fearful denialism. Mother Teresa is too good. She can’t be real because if she
is holy, then holiness exists, and I could be holy too.
This documentary
isn’t perfect. It’s a bit jumbled and hard to follow at times. Yet it hits all
the important parts and does a good job underlining the work of the Knight as
well. During the leadership of the previous supreme knight Carl Anderson, the
KC was, somewhat unfairly, painted as a partisan organization aligned with
conservative causes. No Greater Love, presented by Anderson’s successor,
reminds American Catholics that our duty to the poor is not divorced from pro-life
and pro-marriage causes but a natural extension of them. Again, something that
the world never seems to understand.
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