This has been on my mind so often ever since I finished the book by Monsignor Maasburg. As I was reading Jack Schwager just now on how he felt about trading 22 years later since he wrote his first Market Wizard book, I found the going very tough because this story kept interrupting my reading!
It is possible that Mother Teresa also had to fight to keep this modesty and simplicity against her own temptations. Her toilet cleaning, which I have already mentioned, also had spiritual significance, as the following story that I heard illustrates. On an overseas flight to Washington to visit the then U.S. president Ronald Reagan, one of the Sisters who was accompanying her noticed something odd: Mother Teresa went into the toilet at the front of the business-class section, first into the one on the right, then into the one on the left. Then she walked to the back of the plane to the other toilets. The Sister’s curiosity won out over her embarrassment and she asked Mother Teresa the reason for these repeated trips to the toilets. Her brief answer was, “Exorcism!” Mother Teresa had cleaned all the toilets, and it seems that it was precisely in cleaning the toilets that she found an antidote to any hint of pride. This would fit well with the maxim that she often repeated: “How do you learn humility? Only through humiliations!”
Maasburg, Leo (2011-10-11). Mother Teresa (Kindle Locations 2357-2365). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.
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