14 Marian Helper • Fall 2022 • Marian.org What would Mother say? Etched upon my memory is the first conversation I ever had with Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” who died 25 years ago. It was a hot summer day filled with holy surprises. My family and I had participated at a private Mass at a Missionaries of Charity convent. We had no idea when invited that Mother Teresa would be with us. We didn’t know we would be very blessed to also have a private audience with her afterwards. After Mass, in the convent’s foyer, I tried to digest the amazing blessings of being so close to a saint, while holding onto my toddler daughter Jessica so that she couldn’t run around the convent! That’s when Mother Teresa approached and asked an unexpected question. “Is this the baby who was singing at Mass?” How lovely! She referred to a somewhat noisy child as a singing baby! The petite nun placed her worn, wrinkled hand on Jessica, nestled in my arms, my children Justin and Chaldea nearby. Mother declared, “Your children are very lucky to have a family.” The Albanian-Indian nun, dressed in a simple cotton sari, was accustomed to seeing children in other sorts of situations. Many families to whom she ministered were broken and miserable in some way, or severely impoverished — their lives dangling on worn spindly threads. The blessing of family Mother Teresa could not have known that I had been an abandoned single mother for many years or that I had lost three babies to miscarriage. By Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle After ‘Roe’ Mother Teresa was delighted to meet Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle’s son Joseph in March 1989 during a visit to a Missionaries of Charity convent in New Jersey.
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