Mother Teresa

(August 26, 1910- September 5, 1997)

Lucknow : A tribute to Mother Teresa

Introduction :

Mother Teresa, also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, MC  was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary.She was born inSkopje (modern Republic of Macedonia), then part of the Kosovo Vilayet in the Ottoman Empire. After having lived in Macedonia for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.

Saint Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries. They run homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children’s and family counselling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, as well as a fourth vow, to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”.

Saint Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. On 19 October 2003, she was beatified as “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta”. A second miracle was credited to her intercession byPope Francis, in December 2015, paving the way for her to be recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.She wascanonised on 4 September 2016, a day before the 19th anniversary of her death.

Childhood and Education :

Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia. Mother Teresa’s original name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. The youngest of the children born to Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu. Her father was a successful merchant and she was youngest of the three siblings. She received her First Communion at the age of five and a half and was confirmed in November 1916. From the day of her First Holy Communion, a love for souls was within her. Her father’s sudden death when Gonxha was about eight years old left in the family in financial straits. Drane raised her children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s character and vocation. Gonxha’s religious formation was further assisted by the vibrant Jesuit parish of the Sacred Heart in which she was much involved. At the age of 12, she decided that she wanted to be a missionary and spread the love of Christ. At the age of 18 she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. There she received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

After a few months of training at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dublin Mother Teresa came to India on 6 January 1929. On May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught geography and catechism at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta. On 24 May 1937, Sister Teresa made her Final Profession of Vows, becoming, as she said, the “spouse of Jesus” for “all eternity.” From that time on she was called Mother Teresa. She continued teaching at St. Mary’s and in 1944 became the school’s principal. A person of profound prayer and deep love for her religious sisters and her students, Mother Teresa’s twenty years in Loreto were filled with profound happiness. Noted for her charity, unselfishness and courage, her capacity for hard work and a natural talent for organization, she lived out her consecration to Jesus, in the midst of her companions, with fidelity and joy.

Death :

Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while visiting Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989, she received an artificial pacemaker. In 1991, after havingpneumonia while in Mexico, she suffered further heart problems. She offered to resign her position as head of the Missionaries of Charity, but the sisters of the congregation, in asecret ballot, voted for her to stay. Mother Teresa agreed to continue her work as head of the congregation.

In April 1996 Teresa fell and broke her collar bone. In August she suffered from malaria and failure of the left heart ventricle. She had heart surgery but it was clear that her health was declining. The Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry Sebastian D’Souza, said he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa with her permission when she was first hospitalised with cardiac problems because he thought she may be under attack by the devil.

On 13 March 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September 1997

10 powerful quotes by Mother Teresa

1.“If I ever become a Saint–I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven–to light the light of those in darkness on earth,” she said.

2. “I am everything. Every country I love and I am a child of God to love the humans,” she said in a 1995 interview when asked about her nationality.

3. “I see somebody dying, I pick him up. I find somebody hungry, I give him food. He can love and be loved. I don’t look at his color, I don’t look at his religion. I don’t look at anything. Every person whether he is Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist, he is my brother, my sister,” she said in the same interview.

4. “Do ordinary things with extraordinary love,” she often said, according to a priest who knew her through her Missionaries of Charity.

5. “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do,” she said in her Nobel Peace Prize lecturein 1979.

6. “Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love,” she also said in the lecture.

7. “We fear the future because we are wasting the today,” she wrote inWhere There is Love, There is God.

8. “The future is so much in the hands of God, I find it much more easy to accept today because yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not come and I have only today,” she also wrote in the book.

9. “We have been created for greater things, to love and be loved,” she wrote in the same book.

10. “I do not agree with the big way of doing things. To us, what matters is an individual,” she wrote.

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