Mother Teresa's power still felt

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

Mother Teresa changed the life of Chaminade professor Jon James, who took this photo after the two met in August 1994 in Calcutta, India. Ceremonies marking Mother Teresa's beatification are set for Oct. 19 in Rome. Jon James

Among those is Mililani Trask, the Hawaiian activist and Big Island attorney who is heading to Rome to attend ceremonies marking Mother Teresa's Oct. 19 beatification.

Trask worked at various times with the diminutive nun she calls "Mother," in Calcutta, India, as well as in San Francisco, where they set up a house for AIDS patients. Trask traveled with the soon-to-be Blessed Mother Teresa to Rome a decade ago.

Some Catholic observers have been speculating that Pope John Paul II timed the beatification of Mother Teresa for this month, when he celebrates the 25th anniversary of his papacy, so she would upstage him. Put both Mother Teresa and the pope together, however, and something otherworldly occurs, as Trask found when she attended a papal Mass with Mother Teresa during their Rome trip.

"When the pope and Mother Teresa prayed in the same room, something happens," a friend told Trask. "It will feel like the air is thick, time will slow down, things will go in slow motion. It happens every time the pope and Mother are together. Every time."

Trask's observations coincided with that. She said that as Mass commenced, a vortex seemingly opened, as if Trask were part of a great whirlwind, with the creator himself looking down.

"I knew that my prayers would hold great power," said Trask, who was raised Catholic. " ... So I cleared my mind to pray for myself, my family, the people of Hawai'i, the Earth itself and finally, peace."

Peace is a defining concept for Mother Teresa, agreed Shirley Rivera, another personal fan of the nun who died in 1997.

"Mother Teresa was a great instrument of peace," said the teacher and counselor at Epiphany School in Kaimuki who spent time with Mother Teresa in Calcutta in 1992. "She treated the people she worked with in a peaceful manner."

When Rivera worked in the Indian orphanage founded by Mother Teresa, she had a chance to spend time with her for a few weeks.

"When she looked at me, it was like she was touching my soul," Rivera said. "She was able to sense what I was searching for."

Mother Teresa immediately spoke of the question weighing on Rivera's mind: What does God want me to do?

"It caused me to burst into tears," she recalled. "She hit the button right there. I started crying."

That was the same response Jon James had when he met Mother Teresa in the summer of 1994.

"I'd never felt that way in front of another human being," said the professor at Chaminade, a Roman Catholic. He unexpectedly ended up in Calcutta one hot day in August.

James had been told that if he was ever there, he should attend services at the chapel where Mother Teresa had founded her order, the Missionaries of Charity.

"The chapel was on the second floor of the motherhouse, overlooking the courtyard," James recalled. "I got there early. While waiting for prayer to begin, I looked up and looked across from where I was standing at the door of the chapel, and there was Mother Teresa, sitting there on a bench, reading."

They exchanged pleasantries, he asked about her health, and then he said, "Mother Teresa, do you have some time? Can I see you?"

She responded: "Yes, my son."

"I got down on my knee and asked her to bless me," James said. "I started tearing up and cried like a baby. Even when I tell it now, I well up."

After she prayed over him, she drew him up by his arms and put him on the bench next to her. They talked for about 40 minutes: about the orphanage he was working with in India, about dealing with church politics, about her heart problems. From this sprang a friendship that has since changed the path of his life.

He has started another orphanage in India and on her advice, intends to retire there, working with the children and giving to them in a concrete way.

Correction: Jon James' name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.