The canonization of Mother Teresa invites us to look to her as a Christian hero, an outstanding model of the Christian life.  Pope Francis has chosen to have Mother Teresa’s canonization during this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, particularly during the Jubilee celebration for workers and volunteers of mercy. The whole pontificate of Pope Francis is marked by attention and love for the last, the least and the lost, for the marginalized, for those at the peripheries of human existence – the poorest of the poor. How fitting, then, to have Mother Teresa to be, we could even say, the saint of this Jubilee!

At the time of the Inspiration (1946), Jesus gave to Mother Teresa the name of the religious community He was asking her to begin: Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa “translated” this to “carriers of God’s love.” In this too, she was following Jesus’s directions; He had invited her: “You come - go amongst the poor - carry Me with you into them.” Thus, she exhorted her religious family to be faithful to the mission entrusted to them: “Carry Him and His light into the homes of the poor, to the souls most in need. Spread the charity of His Heart wherever you go.”

The theme expresses as well those particular qualities of charity that she was to make known to the poorest of the poor: the tenderness of God’s merciful love for those most in need. She urged her followers to “serve the poor with tender and compassionate love.” Mother Teresa insisted that love “cannot remain still. It has to get into action, and that action is service.”

As we approach the canonization of Mother Teresa, we may be encouraged by her example and message of God’s tender and merciful love to put “love into living action” as she did, to do “ordinary things with extraordinary love.” We may not be called to do exactly what Mother Teresa did, but we can do what God entrusts uniquely to each one of us. Mother Teresa understood this so well: “As I often say to people who tell me they would like to serve the poor as I do, “What I can do, you cannot; what you can do, I cannot. But together we can do something beautiful for God.”

As the Church wishes to present Mother Teresa as an icon of the Father’s mercy in this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, it is our hope that her words and example will urge all of us to become generous servants and to reflect the “face” of God’s mercy to those around us, beginning in our own families. As Mother Teresa’s face radiated God’s tender and merciful love, so too may we become more and more a reflection of His tender mercy through our loving actions.