BY GRETCHEN KEISER

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--The news of Mother Teresa's death in India was received by her Missionaries of Charity in Atlanta in the same way that they respond to all of daily life, in prayer.

First word came on the afternoon of Sept. 5 by telephone, but because of the life lived by the order, the tranquil spirit of the Gift of Grace House seemed remarkably unchanged. Inside the residence, the women being cared for were undisturbed. The tears of the sisters and the volunteers ebbed and flowed before the silence of the Blessed Sacrament placed on the altar.

Sister Gaynel, mc, the superior, was composed in her grief as the first friends and faithful volunteers began to arrive at the gate at 995 St. Charles Ave. where the sisters care for homeless women with AIDS. It was a beautiful fall afternoon with a bright blue sky and flowers in bloom in the yard, carefully planted and nurtured by volunteers.

Sorrow etched in her eyes, she held back tears and immediately began a holy hour, placing the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance on the altar and kneeling next to Sister Treslin, mc, and Sister Amabella, mc. Their white handkerchiefs occasionally were pressed to their cheeks.

As the three knelt on the floor in front of the altar, all that was heard was a gentle murmur of voices of volunteers in the next room, a breeze wafting the curtain, the phone beginning to ring, the soft sound of water flowing through an aquarium.

Many minutes passed and a volunteer arrived with flowers wrapped in tissue and dropped to her knees in the row behind the sisters. At times she cried silently. Another volunteer began to phone, telling those who regularly donate time at the Gift of Grace House that Archbishop John Donoghue would offer Mass there at 7 p.m. Another volunteer with roses in her arms arrived and knelt right down on the tile floor in the next room and prayed.

One by one people came. A portrait of Mother Teresa was placed outside on the front steps and plants and messages began to be left there by passers-by. "A sad day on earth, but a happy day in heaven," one message said. The media arrived and waited respectfully on the sidewalk, while inside the presence of God seemed to fill the silence. Not once did anyone try to gain additional information from any outside source of what had happened in India or what would unfold in the future: no radio, no television, no CNN.

"To me, Mother Teresa is something good," said Blanca Salaski, one of the women who lives at the Gift of Grace House, as she sat serenely on a patio in the sunshine. Although she never knew the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, she appreciates Mother Teresa's sisters who have taken care of her for the last eight months. "The sisters are wonderful."

Jill Dionne was a volunteer serving at the Gift of Grace House when Mother Teresa visited Atlanta in 1995 and it was her only opportunity to meet the Missionaries of Charity foundress although she had previously traveled in India.

"That time really brought to me what it is going to be like in heaven," she said of Mother Teresa's visit to the house. "There was so much love. Mary, a patient, was transformed. She always smiled after that and she died in a lot of joy."

"It's a different world here (in the Gift of Grace House)," she continued. "When the sisters talk about seeing Christ in someone, they really do...People say it must be depressing (to volunteer at the house), but it is the biggest joy of my life. It's the best."

Linda Meyer, another volunteer, waited in line for two hours in order to get inside Sacred Heart Church in Atlanta for Mother Teresa's visit there in June 1995. "Her message was compelling," Meyer recalled. "I just had to do something."

The "something" turned out to be a life-changing commitment for the Marietta resident who now volunteers several days a week at the Missionaries of Charity home on St. Charles Avenue and was overjoyed to see Mother Teresa again in Washington, D.C. last year.

"There is a presence (of God) in the house," Meyer said. "The ladies are so special and the sisters. They have changed my life. I drop everything to be here."

As the volunteers talk, one is struck by the simplicity of what is taking place. To volunteer means to come faithfully, to do what needs to be done, to mop and clean bathrooms, to cook a meal, to bathe and change the sick, to listen and pass the time with women of frail health, to smile and laugh together and find Jesus in these people and these moments.

Meyer and other volunteers point out that the simplicity of the Missionaries' life determines how the Gift of Grace House operates. "There is no excess at all, no waste."

Food is donated and any that is left over is given away to those in the neighborhood or Grant Park who need it, she said.

Volunteer Anne Brown was also in Sacred Heart Church in 1995 and she sat in a pew directly across from Mother Teresa. "When she came in and knelt, I saw a lady in the presence of the Lord," she said. "She changed my life."

After her first visit to the Gift of Grace House with a priest who was baptizing a resident, Brown sat in her car and cried.

She has become a part of the life of the house and knows almost 30 women who have died there in the last year and a half. "We are holding their hands and the sisters are singing to them," she said. "When they come here, sometimes they are angry. Sometimes they don't know what they have. But for the time they are here with the sisters they are like little children again."

The Missionaries of Charity have, by example, shown Brown what Mother Teresa has shown them, and shown the world.

"The taught me to look at the homeless guys on Peachtree Street and see Jesus."

Now the hours have passed and there are roses, lilies, sunflowers and crape myrtle in vases on the floor around the altar. Thirty or 40 volunteers are crowded into the room, some with children, as the monstrance is reposed and Archbishop Donoghue begins the celebration of Mass.

"You will always be remembered as the first generation of her sisters," the archbishop says to Sister Gaynel, Sister Treslin, Sister Amabella, pledging the love and support of the archdiocese to them. "We here in Atlanta need your prayers and your good works."

As those who gathered for the Mass go down the steps into the beautiful evening, Sister Gaynel is smiling. "She will be even more close to us now," she reassures everyone. "Mother will be with us. Spiritually she will be even more close to us and strengthen us...She will help us more now."