Transcript of CS#82: Fr. Joseph Langford Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire

Transcript of Interview with Fr. Joseph Langford about Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1002034/Mother-Teresas-Secret-Fire/

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This is the catholic spotlight the broadcast where we talk about what is new, cool and exciting in the catholic market place, I am your host Chris Cash, director of e-commerce from catholiccompany.com your source for all your catholic needs.

And today in the spotlight we have Father Joseph Langford, who was a personal friend of mother Theresa’s and he has an excellent new book out called” Mother Theresa’s Secret fire”. The encounter that changed her life and how it can transform your own. Welcome father Langford.

Fr. Joseph Langford: Well, thank you very much Chris.

Chris Cash: So, father Langford can you tell me a little about what you do with the order of priests that you are with in Tijuana.

Fr. Joseph Langford: Well, I have the privilege to grace and deserve it entirely of helping mother Theresa become a priest branch of our community, and we have began in the south Bronx , back in ‘83 and we eventually outgrew, that little house we had there. We are getting a lot of national vocations especially from Latin America at that time so, being from Santiago I remembered the kind of western Calcutta that is Tijuana that is across the border. It has been in the news a lot now for all the violence there. So, I suggested that to her, and we moved our headquarters there to where they are presently.

We spread over a number of countries, but our base is still there. And we just tried to do what mother Theresa capped us to do. Which was she recognized early on, back in the 1950’s actually. That , she needed priests for her work because the pain of the poor was much more deep at the spiritual level then we had the material, and so that is the part that we try to collaborate with our sisters, our volunteer sisters have four houses Tijuana, orphanages, shelters for the homeless, for the elderly, ***(2:27) between the cracks, we try to make sure that they get full service, sacramental care and Jesus said that the poor are the first claim on the kingdom of God. And we want to be at the service of that.

Chris Cash: so, tell me a little about the book. And what was the inspiration for putting this book together?

Fr. Joseph Langford: Oh gosh, the inspiration goes way way back. Got to know mother Theresa better and had a unique platform from which to see and discuss things with her that normally I would not have had because of the fact that I was trying to build up for, prepare this priesthood community so I had to write across constitutions and I began to sort of intuitive to her a tremendous debt of theology. Her vision of god was so clear, so beautiful, so unwavering in the midst of the kinds of things that she faced in Calcutta and around the world, everyday. The tragedies of the loss of life and the hunger for, she had a tremendous, this great optimism, this energy, this joy, this grace that she, which she moved through and lifted up the sea of poor in gaining people that were around her.

And so I began to feel that people need to know this as I mentioned earlier when we were speaking before the show, that I get a sense of, I think that I had the sense to earlier on before actually knowing her. Mother Theresa was kind of a female Vincent to Paul doing a lot of social good and a lot of charity and compassion but without a lot to say, without a big message. But she has an extraordinary message, something that was so instrumental and overwhelming to her. Based on the craze that she had on the train back in the 1946 that moved her from her rather comfortable existence as a teacher there in Calcutta for upper class girls out into the slums of Calcutta which back in the 50’s were much much worst, then they are even now.

A lone European woman with no funds, no resources, no technology no nothing. Then she transforms Calcutta and ends up transforming the world. Really in many ways, touching thousands and thousands of people. And I began to observe this and ask her questions and at a certain point, in 1984, she shared with me what happened to her, about the experience of God that she had had on the train that launched her what she had always before referred to as her change of location. And she was a profound piece of alloy on current experience of God. But it was one that she was convinced that was open to everyone and that was for *** [05:54] really the key not just the, the book had, has two purposes. One is to lift the veil on what made mother Theresa, mother Theresa.
How did she get to be the way she was from being just a normal school teacher? Obscure, hidden. and really she did not have any extraordinary, human talents or gifts, that you could tell “that’s why she became a Nobel prize winner, that’s why she became famous” she is very ordinary at that level, but in that god did the extraordinary thing and that is why she was so firm and insisting that God can do this, will do this in anyone.

And the second part of the book explains how she kept that into the deep encounter with god alive, even in her darkness. At the feeling level, it was never at the face level. The press has got that all backwards but how she kept that alive even in the midst of the dark night and around her in Calcutta and within her. And most importantly, how we can do the same. I try to share in the book the essential elements of what she understood about God, in the heart of God in those hours on the train. And how that, renewing that contact kept her full of energy, joy and creativity in the worst of time. And she beguiles how she did it and how we can do it. And not that we are going to change the whole world but we can surely change the world around us. Everyone is talking these days about hope and change and this is a hope that is deep and personal and long lasting and a change that we can bring about in our interior life, and our personal life, no matter that the darkness around us. America is going into its own dark night right now. And she has given us a formula for helping us move through that creatively and gracefully. To even making our own contribution in a level where the government cannot.

Chris Cash: So what was it that happened to mother Theresa on the train that changed her life so profoundly?

Fr. Joseph Langford: Well, I don’t want to get into the details of it here, but read the book. Mostly because it is so deep and rich that I wouldn’t want to cover it in 3 or 4 minutes. Just suffice to say that it takes two hopes to talk about the sort of 10000 facets almost like in a diamond that were very clear in what she learned about God.

Chris Cash: And to back up that thought about not trying to take it too quickly. We have commissioned several bloggers to review this book over the last couple of months and many of them and have come back and even very seasoned reviewers who go through books very quickly have said “wow, this book gave me pause like nothing else I have ever read” and it took me a while to get through it because of the deep personal reflection that it caused.

Fr. Joseph Langford: I am very gratified to hear that and I attributed it to only being that hopefully I have been able to do what, actually mother Theresa asked me to write this book back in 1986. And it since been a twenty something year paper of gratitude and of love of course. Because I felt so blessed by, and I saw the effect that whatever grace was working in her. She was very clear about what it was and how she stayed in touch with it. That was what was so important to us is that she was very conscious of it. What it was how to keep it alive? We can do the same. And over 30 years I had a chance because of the position I was in at an official level, I had a chance to travel with her in all different parts of the world, many many times over 30 year. And so she like a, you know, fly in the wall just observed the amazing response that people have to her of every faith, and no faith plus I am in Washington DC right now, based in Tijuana, Mexico.

I came for the national press club book fair and there was one of the books that were highlighted at the fair. And one of the people that came up last night was a fellow who used to work as a reporter for CBS nationally and he was assigned at one point to interview mother Theresa when she was in Denver. And he just took it, he was Jewish; he took it just as an assignment and another assignment of an interesting person. He said when I reach my hand out to shake her hand, at the interview; there was this electricity that went through me that I can only describe as being God. His energy, whatever and it totally turned my life around, that one incident. And five years later, I was baptized catholic Jewish.

This is just the sort of cameo, a little anecdote out of the thousands that have had a chance to see her. This is a tremendous secret that nobody knows about. Each curious fire that was burning within her that we could all see sense in a some way from a distance “why did she make the whole world sit up and take notice”? It wasn’t just because of the work, because plenty of other people did, do the same kind of work. I remember when she got the Nobel Prize, I was working with her sisters at St Louis at that time, and I remember that the professional religious around the area, complaining why her? Why is she getting this prize?

When our founders or whoever does the same work in Africa, in India, why her? Indeed why her? It is not about just the work she does but about that secret fire that is in her. That she goes around like a child dropping matches in a dry forest. And wherever she passes, it is kindled and it springs up. And things change like; let’s talk about hope and change. Here is this man; Jewish and just shaking her hand, changed his life. It happened every where and to tap into that kind of energy and that kind of life and that kind of, that kind of life that people say were her darkness, no, it was a kind of degree and intensity of light, the beauty of light, that could shine through and overcome that darkness and turn into light as she turned Calcutta into truly a city of joy. And so the reactions of those blog reviewers, it just tells me that what she wanted at one point when I had really sort of begun put things together, theses were the puzzle pieces that she had been giving me over the years.

I said, mother, this is what I think happened to you on the train, if it is true, I want to put it in the **constitution for the MC fathers** [13:58] if not, please correct me and thanks. And I hit on it. And then she committed on the same with her. She realized that what she had received was to her and not for her only. It was for the world, it was for the church, it was for everybody. For the devious first of all and it was so big that she did not feel called or equipped to put it in words. And so she focused on living it out, showing the world, showing those furthers away. Most abandoned, most forgotten that God exists and he loves them and how he loves them.

How he cherishes them, all of us as his children. To what extent she went is only a sign of what extent he wants to go. In the places that ache he needs to moralize. But she knew that someone had to explain why she was doing this and that in ‘86 she said, father this is right and that one day you will have to tell the others. And in fact way back then, she penned to preface for what would become this book which was only published 10 years after her death. But she wanted it out there not as a reflection of her, but as a reflection of one that she met on the train and that changed her life. And she told many around her without people knowing how, but now they can know how.

Chris Cash: So, she wrote the preface for this book 22 years ago.

Fr. Joseph Langford: Yes. That is correct; it seems her hand, like we reproduced in the book

Chris Cash: Wow that is quite a vision, now, did she have any other hand in making this book come to the publisher or…

Fr. Joseph Langford: No, all that process began formally only 2 years ago. I mean, I have been preparing it in bits and pieces over all these years and *fatuously* [16.05] it didn’t come out till now. Because only now, have her scattered documents and fully gathered cause for the transition. So there is a lot of her words, her letters, things that I would not have had access to. Had I tried to put it out when she was alive. It would have been impossible then. Because some of the deepest theological things that she left us came months, weeks before her death. And I would not have had access to those and some of the other things came on later. So the real work I just began sharing conferences with her sisters in retreats around the world. Some of her late co-workers in different places. It was only 2 years ago that sort of the formal contract and the work for the book was suddenly with the press and just finishing now. So it is a, yes, in some ways it was frustrating to wait that long and yet, I have no regrets. It is a richer book for having made it.

Chris Cash: Okay. we are going into a short break to hear from our sponsors but when we come back we will hear more from father Joseph Langford about mother Theresa’s secret fire. This is the catholic spotlight.

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Chris Cash: And we are back on the catholic spotlight with father Joseph Langford. Talking about, mother Theresa’s secret fire. And tell me father Langford, how do you share about her secret fire in the book?

Fr. Joseph Langford: Well, the book begins narrating about my own journey of discovery, of coming out, the person of mother Theresa was probably the impression that most people have, that she is a holy, wonderful woman that does great work. And there is some draw that she had that I don’t understand, I feel drawn to her. I see people around me how they are touched, how they are moved. There is something going on here beyond that. For instance, I will give you some examples, the time that I spend and did my theology in Rome and worked for a while in Rome as a priest. And when mother Theresa would be in town in Rome which was quite often in those days on her way to different convents, parts of the world she would pass through Rome and stop to see the Holy Father.
What ever, and very often, a couple of time a year, she would accept invitations to give a talk in parishes, and usually it would be after a vow ceremony for her sisters, she is there in the parish. Church is full to the gills and the pastor would get up and say to her, please share a few words and she would dutifully do that and she very often I had the chance to translate for her. So I will be standing there at the altar next to her. And she will begin to speak; she will be going on for 30 seconds before I jumped in to put it into Italian. But while she is speaking, before these people have a clue as to what she is saying and I look up in the pews in front of me and everywhere these people are in tears. And after you listen pre-conscious. They have no idea what she is saying yet. And so they are not reacting to the beautiful words which they would end up being but there is something else going on here.

The best example of this I think was after we had began our house in the Bronx this young man from California, Thai American wants to come into our experience and tells a story. He was a member of the mafia and he was a gun and drug runner up and down the coast of California and he was in San Francisco at that time when mother Theresa was receiving the keys to the city right after the Nobel Prize. And the city was, the radio stations were broadcasting the ceremony live from the city hall and at the end they asked mother Teresa, to speak and she starts speaking. So our friend is driving down the road on the highway and his music station interrupts, to cut to the ceremony. And he is furious. I want my music, he starts punching around the dial, his car looking for other stations and all of the other local stations are carrying it. It is a big deal, she has just won the Nobel Prize and she is in our city. And he is furious, he decides himself, what the heck, she has to shut up sometime.

He has no clue who she is, doesn’t care who she is. Just says, please be quiet let me get back to my music. So he is sort of gritting his teeth and bearing it as he is driving along the highway, angry that they have taken away his music. And he told us that all of a sudden he starts noticing this strange feeling inside, something is happening inside. Something overwhelming is happening in him. It kept getting stronger and stronger and tears are coming down his face and he is so over come that he has to pull off the highway. And cry out all the ugliness that has been in his life all these years and the mafia. And he is so overwhelmed by this kind of experience that it has never happened to him that he calls the radio station and asks “who is that”? “That was mother Theresa”. “Who is mother Theresa”? And they explained noble prize winner and “where is she right now”? Tells him at the sisters’ convent on 29th and Church Street. He drives over there, rings the bell, is ushered in gets to see, sits down with mother Theresa, she treats him like the royal way that she treated the mayor. And he basically makes a confession of his whole life.

She calls the parish priest, she gets absolution. Turns his life around from the anointing just of her voice. The kind of thing that you see that will be in the visit of our lady to Elizabeth. Behold as soon as the sound of your voice is reached my ears all this cascading chain of grace takes place here in the same old spirit. But every where you go, you see these kind if things happening. And so my approach to mother Theresa observing these things was what is going on here? There is something deeper here. So, the book starts by chronicling my own journey of scratching the surface and not giving up until I found the, indeed the pot of gold that was here at the end of the rainbow. And from there sort of trying to break that down into digestible pieces because it is so, mother Theresa does not have a sort of organized, sense, synthetic, or systematic presentation of what she understood about God.
It would come out in bits and pieces like puzzle pieces. According to what ever was happening around her. The need was or what ever topic she was talking about. So the work that I found myself needing to do was try to gather these scattered crumbs and puzzle pieces and try to, try to piece them together and in overview, when I felt I had had that is when I approached her with what I thought I understood to get the confirmation. And so the first, the next part of the book, details the sort of breaking down but in a systematic way, the organized way, all this dense riches that is in, a lot of her expressions or sayings that you will find on the internet anywhere when they talk about mother Theresa, though they have 6, 7,8,10 of her sayings.

And some of them are *lapidary* [25:55] phrases that have more depth and meaning than the beauty just strikes you, when you first see it. So I try to do that work in the next part of the book and after that just basically just show what was your darkness? Then it wasn’t a crisis of faith. It was not a loss of faith. It was God who sent her to share the material poverty for the poor, also asked her to do what he himself did. In his passion which was to share the interior agony, the interior pain and darkness of the poor. Because you know, you grow up on the sidewalk in Calcutta. No one tells you about God. And no one is showing them to you either because they are stepping over you on their way to work. And so it is like the song says “where is you God” mockingly almost and she was allowed to experience that kind of feeling of, that sense of Jesus took on himself from the cross.

Father where are you? Why have you abandoned me? This feeling of being alone. And yet as he knew, certainly she knew. But what I am feeling is not true. And so that is the life that continued to shine because the darkness, the clouds covered the sky, she never doubted the existence of the sun. And it details first of all how she prayed. What does mother Theresa teach us about prayer? From my own part observing her for 30 years and then taking little snippets off her teachings on prayer and how they derive logically from her experience from God. How it is a cod ton *** [27.52] continuing experience of God. And after her death, two days after her death, John Paul comments on her secret having been that daily renewing in faith of her encounter with God on the train. That is what made her who she was and so if we go into the book very practical ways.

I give basically a meditation early on in the book that tries to allow as it were the reader to step on to the train and these are the kinds of things God would be telling you had you been able to share mother Theresa’s experience. So a sort of guided meditation. And so later in the book, practical steps, because mother Theresa was eminently practical of being in present stock and you know, how do you do it. Just tell me how. And so we go through the steps of how she would keep praying and invites us to pray and then how she rolled up her sleeve to take on seemingly impossible odds. The immense encounter of her needs to the poor of Calcutta and the honour of her world and her philosophy and just doing one thing at a time. Changing the world. One person at a time, one gesture at a time. One bandage at a time, one smile at a time. One prayer at a time. And it worked, it really did, kind of a trickle up revolution of charity. And what she did and what she invites us to do is not to allow our own tragedy and personal pains to become a prisoner. For her it became her lounging pad, her bridge into the pain of others. The fact that she understood that she carried pain in her own life.

She used that as a bridge and to our pain. And God used it through her. God came into the life of so many people around the world like this Jewish reporter, about the mafia through her. And he can do the same thing through us.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you father Langford were there any closing remarks that you would want to make?

Fr. Joseph Langford: Just the facts that what she would say were she alive today, I have heard her say it over a 100 times. That she cannot do the things that your listeners can do. She cannot touch the people that everyone that is listening to this programme can touch. Everyone listening has a network of acquaintances, family. People that they can touch that no one in history has or ever will be able to touch as they. And they are not being called to do what mother Theresa did to go to India, but to find their Calcutta right where they are and to reach out to whoever it is, the nursing home, down the street, Aunt Betty who you have not spoken to in 20 years or whoever. In that little Calcutta that you find yourself and to begin the laws in the light of God exactly where you are. And that way make up your life’s as she did something beautiful for God.

Chris Cash: That is very much appreciated there father Langford. And we appreciate you for coming on and sharing that with us today.

Fr. Joseph Langford: A privilege and a pleasure Chris. Thank you

Chris Cash: Thank you so much and God bless. You have a great day.

Fr. Joseph Langford: Thank you.

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Transcript of Interview with Fr. Joseph Langford about Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1002034/Mother-Teresas-Secret-Fire/