TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER - III
SPIRITUALITY OF ST. MOTHER TERESA AND
ST. CHAWARA: A COMPARITIVE STUDY
Introduction................................................................................................................1
3.1 Missionary spirit of St. Teresa and St. Chavara…...............................................2
3.2 Spiritual Visionary Saints….................................................................................2
3.3 Socio- Cultural Visionary Saints..........................................................................3
3.4 Mission for the Creation of a Just Society…........................................................4
3.5 Welfare Activities for the Poor and the Downtrodden….....................................5
3.5.1 The House of the Destitute…........................................................................6
3.5.2 Upliftment of Dalits.......................................................................................6
3.6 Total Surrender to God….....................................................................................7
3.6.1 Practice of Poverty….....................................................................................8
1.6.2 Prayer an All Embracing Factor....................................................................9
1.7 The Major Difference.........................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................11
 CHAPTER - III
SPIRITUALITY OF ST. MOTHER TERESA AND
ST. CHAWARA: A COMPARITIVE STUDY

Introduction
There are so many saints in the Catholic Church. They all led a good and
saintly life in their time. They were very much concentrated about their spirituality
and did well for that time. They were mainly concentrated on their time and people.
Many of us dreamed of changing the world, but very few chose to act on it, and fewer
still did it. Mother Teresa is an inspirational figure who spread God’s love and
kindness through her behavior. She treated the lepers, educated the poorest of the
poor, fed the hungry and treated every poor like her family. She did lots of charitable
works. Aside from her passion for the service for the poor, mother Teresa change the
world and also inspired us by showing what universal love means.
In the case of Chavara we can see that he started the programme which is good
and suitable for the future society. His educational programmes, books, writings, all
influenced the people day by day. Now we can see that Chavara is influencing all the
part of the world and specially in India. His life is exemplary to all the youngsters.
In this chapter we are going to see the spirituality of St. Mother Teresa and St.
Chavara, how God could make them instruments of service. We can see their
influences in the modern society. Mother Teresa devoted her life for the sick poor.
The charitable works of Mother Theresa influenced the social life of people to the
very great extent that many eminent leaders extended their helping hands to support
her in the works of charity to the poorest of the poor.
We also see Chavara’s influence, we cannot neglect the role of Chavara in the
modern family and also his devotion to the Holy Family. Education is vital in the role
of a person. Now in this present society we cannot think of a illiterate person. Now
Kerala has 100% literary that is only because of the effort of Chavara. So Chavara’s
educational reform influenced the present society.
These saints committed their life for the service of the poor; their service
became their spirituality which God willed it do be done through them.
3.1 Missionary spirit of St. Teresa and St. Chavara
Chavara, a man of holistic vision, had a mission. He had a vision for the
Christian families, St. Thomas Christian church and for the Kerala society. With that
vision and zeal he empowered the church and the Kerala society of the 19th century.
The vision that Chavara had for the life of the lay people, priests and the religious was
quite broad. Chavara’s thoughts and actions in the social sphere made the way for a
great reformation.
Whereas mother Teresa also felt very needs of the poor which she knew
through the personal encounter with Jesus. She gave a direction to the spiritual life of
countless persons. She brought a new dimension to Christian charity and rekindled the
Gospel doctrine of love for the neighbour. She stressed its universality and its
insistence to love those more in need, the poor, the humble, the afflicted, the forlorn,
those society passes by without noticing them. It is especially in the poor, Jesus wants
to be loved and served. Mother Teresa shakes the conscience of the world, but not as a
prophet of doom, not as a Savonarola, threatening destruction by fire and brimstone.
Rather, she echoes the words of St John prove your love for God whom you cannot
see by loving and serving your neighbour whom you can see.1

3.2 Spiritual Visionary Saints

Chavara’s ecclesial vision emerges mainly from his Abba consciousness. God
is the father and all the human beings are the children. He committed himself for the
integral development of the people of God, irrespective of caste, sex, and creed.
According to Bishop Powathil, “Blessed Chavara has been undoubtedly one of the
great spiritual gurus that Kerala had ever seen. He was a spiritual man and at the same
time he was not devoid of anything human. He knew that God’s glory was man’s
glory too. Therefore he was interested in all human spheres.” 2 He was a contemplative
in action. Where ever he went, he became involved in the affairs of the people of God.
He writes in the chronicles of the monastery at Mannanam: “For this Malabar, which
had received the faith from St. Thomas the Apostle, remains barren, not having
produced even one saint, while other counters and islands which received faith much
later have brought forth several saints.”3 He was of the opinion that homeland was
short of saints due to lack of good examples. Chavara’s challenging vision would not
1
E. Le Joly, Mother Teresa the glorious Years, Mumbai, St. Paul Publication,1992, p. 7.
2
Maria, Empowered Womanhood, Bangalore, Dharmaram Publication, 2014, p. 210.
3
Maria, Empowered Womanhood, p. 210.

2
be implemented in Kerala for the lack a Tapasubhavan (house of discipline) even for
the priests, and it forced him and his companions to start a Darsanveed (house of
vision) among the Christian communities. His spiritual visions are guide line for the
present religious communities.
In the case of Mother Teresa, when her cause for canonization was opened,
just two years after her death in 1997, documents were found in the archives of the
Jesuits in Calcutta, with the spiritual director and another of Mother Teresa’s close
priest friends, and in the office of the bishop, containing her accounts of the
communications.
Fr. Vazhakala, who co-founded the contemplative branch of the Missionaries
of Charity alongside Mother Teresa, said he has a document handwritten by Mother
Teresa where she discusses what Jesus spoke to her directly during the time of the
locutions and visions. This all happened while she was a missionary sister in the Irish
order of the Sisters of Loreto, teaching at St. Mary’s school in Calcutta.
Mother Teresa wrote that one day at Holy Communion, she heard Jesus say, “I
want Indian nuns, victims of my love, who would be Mary and Martha, who would be
so united to me as to radiate my love on souls.”
It was through these communications of the Eucharistic Jesus that Mother
Teresa received her directions for forming her congregation of the Missionaries of
Charity.
“She was so united with Jesus,” Fr. Vazhakala explained, “that she was able to
radiate not her love, but Jesus’ love through her, and with a human expression.”4

3.3 Socio- Cultural Visionary Saints

Chavara’s spiritual vision led him to be an innovator of many socio-pastoral,
cultural, educational and social reforms. He was a guiding light in the field of
education, mass media, home for the aged, etc. According to Chavara life becomes
meaningful when we live for others. In the words of Bishop Mathew Kavukattu:
“while he (Chavara) most scrupulously lived the life of a religious, dedicated to the
love and service of God, the same divine love in him inspired him to devote himself,
as much as he could, to the love and sevice of men. It is a long and most praiseworthy

4
B. Hannah “Did You Know Mother Teresa Experienced the Vision of Jesus?”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/34451/did-you-know-mother-teresa-experienced-visions-
of-jesus, accessed on 25th November 2021.

3
record, his varied enterprises and activities for the religious, social, cultural and
educational advancement of his fellow men.”5
Chavara’s thought and actions in the social sphere paved the way for the
transformation of the society. He worked hard for the betterment of the society mainly
through education. As a socio- cultural and educational visionary his vision embraced
most of the important fields in the society. He took a keen interest in uplifting the
underprivileged classes, the orphans and the poor. He stood as the champion for the
cause of women, the downtrodden, the sick, poor and Dalits.

3.4 Mission for the Creation of a Just Society

Chavara turned his attention to the uplift of the lowest cast and outcast. He
knew that many of them were victims of age-old oppressive practices. He believed
that the faith he professed should be shared with the less fortunate of his fellow men,
and that the right knowledge of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man would
be the first step towards developing a self confident in the poor people. This would
eventually lead to lifting them up socially also. He permitted Ezhavas, Harijans and
others to enter his monasteries, work there and earn their livelihood. He kept them
well supplied with food, clothing and medicine and opened for them Churches for
worship. In order to prepare the Harijans and Avarnas for this future struggle, he
wanted to educate them. Moreover he encouraged the Harijans to join the Sanskrit
school at Mannanam where he wanted to teach them Sanskrit, the sacred language,
sitting together with the children of savarnas. He opened Catechumenates attached to
each house of his institute, where non-Christians belonging to the backwards classes
were taught the fundamental of the faith and were baptized.
For Mother Teresa the works of now is the works of tomorrow. For her it is
not a waste of time or life to spend that time just feeding the person today. There are
many people who can do that, who can remove the works of injustice and so on. But
for her that person needs a shelter. She thinks her part is fulfilled there. And by doing
her part many people are getting concerned to do the second part- to improve and to
help the people, to remove the poverty and that hunger and that nakedness.6

5
K.C. Chacko, Father Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Mannanam, St Joseph Monastery
Publication, 1959, p. 1.
6
E. Eileen. Kathleen, Prayertimes with Mother Teresa: a new adventure in prayer, New York,
Image, 1989, p. 31

4
3.5 Welfare Activities for the Poor and the Downtrodden
St. Chavara was very much compassionate towards the poor and marginalized
people of the society. In the history of the life of the Church in Kerala, before the time
of Chavara there was no charitable institution such, where the aged persons or
orphans were cared for and protected. There was no pious association to help the
dying in a spiritual way.7In 1869 at Kainakari Chavara started the home for sick and
aged, and this was the first house, which built for charitable in Kerala. This was an
institution to give refuge to the sick and destitute, who had no one to look after them,
and to prepare the dying to face a happy death. In order to give food and clothing to
the poor, Chavara had also brought few acres of land for financial support near the
Mannanam monastery. Now we are going to some more broadly about the activities
of Chavara for them poor.
Mother was a woman who had changed people and saved them through her
faith and determination. Mother Teresa started many orphanages in India and had to
beg for donation from influential Indians. She took sick people to her orphanages and
gave them shelter and relief.8 When we look at the early life of mother Teresa, she
was from the very rich family; she could have led a comfortable life in the west. But
because of her exceptional conviction and deep trust in God she preferred to be with
poorest of the poor.9 Mother while ministering to the poor, special attention is paid to
the unwanted and deprived of love. For her, the worst disease in the world is not
leprosy or tuberculosis but the feeling of being unwanted, unloved, and abandoned by
everybody. The poorest are the hurt individuals, unwanted, unloved, spurned or
ignored, by society. What the poor need is not our compassion or our pity, hut our
help and love. Mother never gets tired of repeating “The poor are very kind people.
The poor are great. They have great value. They give to us much more than we give to
them.10 Mother’s love for them, reflecting God’s love, makes them equal as brothers
and sisters in a family, however widely different in intellectual or social qualities, in
physical beauty or grace.

7
Maria, Empowered Womanhood, p. 105.
8
Manju A. Thomas, Moral Values, Guwahati, Anshu Publication, 2012, p. 18.
9
Annie Madavath, “Mother Teresa:The 21st Century Prothatic Women,” p. 11.
10
MariasusaiDhavamony, “Mother Teresa’s Mission of Love for the Poorest of the Poor,” p.
140.

5
3.5.1 The House of the Destitute
He started houses to give shelter to the destitute, which are known as
upavishala (House of destitute of mutual love). It was a Christian as well as a people’s
movement by which he wanted to inculcate the value of Christian charity on the
minds of the faithful. It is a monument to Chavara’s love for the poor and
marginalized people of society, the upavisala started in Kainakary and also he gives
all the responsibilities to the people to look after the house.11
Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta started house for destitute, people of
Moti Jheel gathered money to start a small home for dying destitutes. The house was
named as Nirmal Hriday which means the place of pure heart. There were people who
objected because they didn’t like the smell of the dying. There for Mother Teresa
went to the Calcutta Corporation and begged of them to give her a place where people
could die with dignity and love. “It is a shame for people to die on our city roads,” she
told them The Corporation considered the question and told Mother they had two
places; one, a house not far from the Mother House, and the other a pilgrims’ rest
house, near the great temple of Kalighat, which was then occupied by goondas- thugs
and loafers-who used it as a place for gambling and drinking.
Mother Teresa chose Kalighat not, as some of her early critics claimed, to
convert people to Christianity at the very vortex of Hinduism, but because she knew
that most of the city’s destitutes go to Kalighat to die. It is the wish of all devout
Hindus in the city to be cremated in this sacred spot.12

3.5.2 Upliftment of Dalits

Chavara was always with the poor. Even though he was born in a middle class
family, he was able to know the difficulties, which were being faced by them.
Chavara always spoke for the poor. In order to change the pathetic condition of the
Dalits Chavara introduced education for them, because Chavara knew that education
is the most powerful weapon, which can change the people’s attitude and character.
Therefore, he initiated the special school for them on 1864 with 75 pupils. 13They all
were lived on daily wages. Therefore, school was functioned only in the evening and

11
J. Eroorickal, Mystical and Missionary Spirituality of Blessed Kuriakose Elias Chavara,
Dharmaram, Bengalore, 2014, p. 202.
12
D. Desmond, Mother Teresa Her People and Her Work, Britain, Nachiketa Pulication, 1978,
p.50.
13
V. Plathottam, Bharath Apostle the Saviour of Harijans the Protector of the Poor: Blessed
Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Palai, St. Thomas Press, 1991, p. 86.

6
on holidays. He was managed to give almost all the noon lunch for them. During the
time of Chavara the poor and Dalits were not given the just wages due to them.
Chavara firmly spoke against this. He said, “Do not deny just wages to laborers; do
not delay the wages due to the laborers, because it is a sin before the Lord.”(Ts
I.a.18). He considered poor as God’s own children. According to his view, God is
always with the poor and he seriously worked for their upliftment. Chavara insisted
on giving alms to them: God is to be seen in the poor. In later these people were
called ‘daridranarayanan’ (poor of God) by Swami Vivekananda. And Mahatma
Gandhi called them Harijans (People of God). Any the word ‘people of God’ first
used by Chavara we may doubt that other social reformers followed Chavara’s path to
uplift them giving ‘God’s people’.
Dalits, previously known as “untouchables,” are excluded in India’s caste
system based on their parentage, bad karma, and occupations (for example, butchers
are “untouchables” because of their contact with animal carcasses, as are janitors as a
result of their contact with human waste). For centuries, they have been victims of
violence and segregation. The caste system originates in the Hindu scriptures. For
Mother Teresa, caste made no difference. She was famous for helping India’s poor,
who were often untouchables. Many upper-caste Indians simply walked indifferently
past starving, sick, and filthy Dalits. For Mother Teresa, caste made no difference.
She was famous for helping India’s poor, who were often untouchables. Many upper-
caste Indians simply walked indifferently past starving, sick, and filthy Dalits. In
Hindu teaching, it was their own fault they found themselves in such circumstances:
they had done bad things in a previous incarnation or chosen an unclean profession.14

3.6 Total Surrender to God

Saints Mother Teresa and Chavara bore the abundant fruits by doing the will
of God. They sacrificed everything of their life for serve the poor. Sacrificing oneself
is very difficult task which people are unable to do it until and unless they are totally
rendered to God.

Total Surrender of One’s Will in the very first paragraph of his testament,
Chavara has spelt out his radical understanding of obedience that he wants his
followers to practise. “The only mark of a religious is total surrender of one’s will and

14
M. Philip, “The Scandal of Mother Teresa” https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/01/09/the-
scandal-of-mother-teresa/, accessed on 29th November 2021.

7
obedience as if one does not have one’s own eyes and ears. One who practises it is a
true religious.” In contemporary theology the vow of obedience is not to be
understood as a slavish and blind submission to the superior. It is rather an effective
means of discovering and executing the will of God. Both the superior and the subject
have the common intention of discovering and doing the will of God.15

Mother Teresa insists using the term surrender in the sense of renunciation,
letting go. It is not the original military sense of surrendering to the enemy rather it is
the ego that finally surrenders to the one from whom it comes just like everything
else. Constant surrender to God transforms the whole human personality. The finite
individual being gets dissolved into the universal understanding in which every
particular state is recognized within the whole, and action no longer finds its cause
and effect in the self-affirmation through result, but turns into peaceful acceptance of
daily happenings, saying yes and amen to life. This means emptying oneself totally,
allowing one’s ego to be used, broken into pieces and visible to all regardless of both
success and failure. We must empty our self, in other words, we must enslave our ego.
Mother Teresa emphasizes several times saying “The more we empty ourselves, the
more room we give God to fill us”.16

3.6.1 Practice of Poverty

The total self surrender to God helped them to undergo anything and
everything without any hesitation… The baptismal name of Chavara was 'Kuriakose'
which means in Greek ‘one who belongs to the Lord’. The “Lord is my portion” is a
motto that Chavara received and practiced from a very tender age. 17In 1817 or 1818,
he was formally initiated into the seminary with reception of toncure from Bp Peter
Alcantra who was at that the vicar apostolic of Varapuzha. On that solemn occasion
he adopted the motto: “The Lord is my portion” (Ps 16:5), and ever since he lived up
to it. For him God was everything. Chavara and, in fact, all the founding members of
the congregation started practising poverty much before their formal profession of it.

A basic aspect of the practice of evangelical poverty is the voluntary

renunciation of the right of private property so that the religious have everything in
15
K.Thomas, SpiriItuality of saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Dharmaram Publication,
Bangalore, 2017, pp. 189-190.
16
G. Gloria, Mother Teresa: An East-West Mysticism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 139-141.
17
J. Eroorickal, Mystical and Missionary Spirituality of Blessed Kuriakose Elias Chavara, P.
236.

8
common and nothing in private. Consequently whatever a religious may acquire as
salary, gift, etc., automatically goes to the common funds from which his/her needs
are met as well. Chavara started the earnest practice of this basic principle of religious
poverty almost twenty-five years before he canonically made his profession in 1855.
That means religious life and the practice of evangelical counsels for him was more a
personal and charismatic matter than something legal and institutional.18

“Our poverty is our freedom”, says Mother Teresa. She clarifies that the
suffering and the uneasiness of the present times can be attributed to a wrong concept
of freedom, which we may add, forms one of the pillars of modern culture: freedom
as everyone’s right to express one’s own will. The position taken by Mother Teresa is
clear: “We cannot be free unless we are able to surrender our will to the will of God”.
Her concept of freedom she refers to as the supreme goal. True freedom is realized
not through the utmost expression of individualism, but through the suppression of
any attachment and partiality towards determinate things that take us away from the
One Being and make us slaves to the world of multiplicity. Freedom comes along
with the detachment from things and from us.

Mother Teresa, while emphasizing the importance of detachment, repeats

these concepts almost in every sentence, also when she deals with material poverty.
Actually, the things we possess, do take hold of us, become like obsessions to us and
condemn us to be anxious of preserving and increasing them, thereby leaving us
always dissatisfied.19

1.6.2 Prayer an All Embracing Factor

Prayer is the lifting of the mind and heart to God. Prayer is a love relationship
of oneself to God and God to oneself. A good relationship is not just a falling in step
with one another. It is a sharing of directions. Prayer is how we share the road with
God.20 Prayer we must mean not merely the formal acts of vocal or mental prayer. It is
rather the life in relation with God in general including the practices of austerity, the
supernatural motives in all our undertakings, our attitudes to the people and things
around us, the faith-vision we maintain in our responses to all that happens to and

18
K.Thomas, SpiriItuality of Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, pp. 141-146.
19
G. Gloria, Mother Teresa: An East-West Mysticism, p. 77.
20
M. Joseph, “prayer: Review for religious,” Christian Heritage and Contemporary Living,
Vol.57, 1998, p. 529.

9
around us, and the supernatural perspective in which we see and assess the events and
experiences. Prayer or prayer life, therefore, is an all-embracing factor in one’s life.21

Chavara was the proud heir of a prayer culture, a culture in which prayer was
considered a supreme value. In it prayer was an archetype, which he shared from the
very birth and even from the conception, so to say. His parents, who were of excellent
virtues, especially his mother sowed in his tender mind the seed of the spirit of prayer.
By word and deed his mother initiated him to prayer. introduced him to the mysteries
of Christian faith, and to the devotions to the Holy Family, the Holy Eucharist and Bl.
Virgin Mary; and she brought him up as a disciplined child. The seed of the spirit of
prayer that had fallen in the good soil of Chavara’s heart, duly sprouted, and was
nurtured first by the priest in the presbytery where he was sent by the parents to stay
for some time just before he entered the seminary at the age of about thirteen. He
recalled that the priest there brought him up, and taught him to participate in and
assist at Mass, and practise virtues and avoid whatever is evil. Another great and
decisive influence on his prayer life was exerted by the ascetic theologian Fr Thomas
Palackal, who was his malpan (rector) in the seminary, the spiritual director. Chavara
was the malpan’s favourite disciple. Even after the ordination also he continued to be
under the guidance of and in close association with Fr Palackal.22

1.7 The Major Difference

St. Mother Teresa and St. Chavara had the same mission to carry out the will
God but they carried out he mission in different forms. The major difference we see in
their life is:

Mother Teresa was much deeply involved in the mission of love and charity.
In a world that was more and more complicated, where knowledge upstaged wisdom,
everything appeared to be very simple for Mother Teresa. This simplicity steeped in
humility attracted the crowed to her. In Mother Teresa, the people recognized what is
the best in themselves. Everything she went she brought more of her soul. Mother’s
simplicity manifested itself in gentleness, but a gentleness coming from an incredible
source of strength. A simplicity, which places all in the hands of God’s Providence
and expects everything from it and a divine simplicity because she was close to God

21
K.Thomas, SpiriItuality of Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, p. 209.
22
K.Thomas, SpiriItuality of Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, pp. 214-216.

10
who is love. Mother Teresa is an eloquent model of charity, for Christ's love
compelled her to give her life to others. She stripped herself of all unnecessary and
artificial needs for love of God and in solidarity with the poor of the world. This love,
which sprung from faith, was put into service a service which was whole hearted and
free.23

St chavara was much deeply involved in the mission of reformation of the

socity. The prophetic vision of Chavara enabled him to relate himself to the various
aspects of the life of the Christian community and to adopt ways and means for
educating and revitalizing it from within. His pastoral vision was so comprehensive
that no aspect of Christian life was left out in his all-embracing commitment to
transform the society. Thereby Chavara tried to restore the authenticity of an ancient
Church in matters of discipline, worship and spirituality.24

Conclusion
The life St. Mother Teresa and St. Chavara influenced the life of the people.
These missionary saints went down to the lives of the poor and abandoned people and
brought out their human identity into the light of world. Their prayer lives were
reflected in all their works. They emptied themselves from any types of attachments
and in different ways they experienced the only one God. St Chavara specially served
to the people of Kerala. He could see and understood the difficulties of the people and
thus started reforming the social status of the people. He educated them. He played a
major role in the uplifting of the people especially for the lower rank of the society.

The message of Mother Teresa is her life itself. What Mother Teresa taught
came from her heart that was overflowing with love and compassion for the poorest of
the poor. And that was her methodology to love and serve. She was entrusted with the
mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humility, especially for the poorest of
the poor. Mother Teresa was a woman filled with God’s love which she spread to all
who really longed for love. Through the works charity she loved everyone especially
to the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Her service to the poor became the spirituality of

23
K. George, Mother Teresa: Saint of the Gutters, Bengaluru, Asian Trading Corporation,
2016, p. 17.

24
Panthaplackal, Thomas and Jophy. eds., Foot Prints of Holiness, Kakkanad: Mattathil
Printers & Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2015, p. 147.

11
her life. In serving them she encountered Jesus who appeared in the poor as the one
who is suffering.

12