The Day I Made Mother Teresa Laugh

It was before the time when everyone carried a mobile phone with a digital camera. One person took a photograph. I never received a copy. But there are few memories more vividly embedded in my mind.

Thirty-one years ago today, and more than three decades before my association with World Jewish Relief USA, I had one of the most powerful and unexpected spiritual experiences of my life.

I was serving as the Town Manager of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. I had been hired when I was just 23 years old to manage a small, old coal town of some 5,200 residents, all squeezed into a half-square-mile area. Mahanoy City’s claim to fame was being the birthplace of cable television. Beyond that, not much happened there. As I often described it, the typical Mahanoy City vignette was an 80-year-old woman sitting on her front porch drinking a beer at 10 o’clock in the morning.

Then I went to work on Monday, June 12, 1995, expecting an ordinary week, and learned that our small town would be receiving a visit that coming weekend from Mother Teresa.

As it turned out, and as I had no previous notion, that half-square-mile of town I managed included a branch of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order. The Nobel Peace Prize winner would be visiting and attending Mass that weekend at Saint Joseph Roman Catholic Church.

While Mother Teresa was among the most recognized people on the planet, it’s far from an overstatement that she traveled more modestly than other famous figures. Surely, if Bruce Springsteen or Oprah Winfrey were coming to town, they would be arriving with a massive security detail and media entourage. Mother Teresa, on the other hand, was planning to arrive with a group of nuns in a green Dodge Caravan.

So, from that Monday morning on, my week became consumed with planning for an event that would have been major in Manhattan but was simply mammoth in Mahanoy City. I met with the monsignor and the bishop. I worked with my police department and fire chiefs on security plans. State and regional agencies offered helicopters, bomb-sweeping patrols, and mounted officers. Needing a mobile press headquarters, I commandeered the Mrs. T’s Pierogi-mobile from the generous owners of the nearby company in Shenandoah.

Monsignor Anthony Wassel asked if I would formally welcome Mother Teresa and introduce the opening hymn at Mass that weekend, simulcast through the region on live television. How could I possibly say no?

That week flew by despite the fact that I barely slept.

Then came what remains one of the most surreal moments of my life. On Saturday morning, the monsignor introduced me to Mother Teresa in the basement of the tiny convent.

First, I presented her with a framed proclamation on behalf of the Town of Mahanoy City, which I can only imagine she took home, hung proudly in her office, and showed off to all of her friends. (Really, I have no idea what happened to it.)

Then the monsignor said, “Mother Teresa, this is David Weisberg. He put all of this together.” He repeated and carefully enunciated, “His name is David Weisberg,” apparently wanting to make absolutely certain she understood that I was not Roman Catholic.

Mother Teresa, incredibly diminutive – at least in stature – looked up at me with her kind face and said, “We are all God’s children.”

I looked back at her, having absolutely no idea what to say. I opened my mouth and replied, “Well, Mother, I’m just trying to keep all of my bases covered.”

She started laughing. I’ve never been sure quite why she did, but I laughed too.

And I walked away thinking, “Hey, I made Mother Teresa laugh. How many people in the world can say that?”

And realizing that what made Mother Teresa so extraordinary was not simply her faith, but her conviction that our obligation to care for one another transcends the boundaries that can so easily divide us.

While she and I may not have agreed on every issue, what we shared was a belief that every person in crisis deserves to be lifted up.

Today, I have the privilege of serving as Executive Director of World Jewish Relief USA. Throughout the year, our staff show up in places, often those that aren’t in the headlines, to help people they have never met and whose lives may look very different from their own.

When World Jewish Relief staff respond to crises in places such as Mozambique, eastern Ethiopia, or Bangladesh wearing shirts bearing Jewish stars, often serving people who may never have encountered a Jewish organization before, it is not to make a point about who we are as Jews. It is simply because that is who we are as Jews.

The families whose livelihoods we help restore, whose homes we repair, or whose communities we strengthen are not asked to share our faith. They are simply fellow human beings facing extraordinary challenges.

An hour after my brief conversation with Mother Teresa, I stood before an overflowing congregation and introduced the opening hymn, “Here I Am, Lord.”

In the Torah, when Abraham is first called by God, he responds with a single word: Hineni. Here I am.

Thirty-one years later, I still think about those words.

Despite my being a young town manager from central Pennsylvania and her being a selfless sage who focused her work in Calcutta, we shared a belief that people in crisis deserve to be lifted up.

Not because they are like us.

But because they are human.

If we choose to look and listen, there are moments each day when the world calls upon us to look beyond ourselves to see others in need.  To respond. To show up. To serve. To help.

It’s not about keeping our own bases covered. It’s not about receiving Nobel Prizes.  It’s about fulfilling our responsibility to the world.

Hineni, indeed.