The life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA (1910-1997)

“ By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic  nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus” . Small of stature, rocklike in faith, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. “God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be his love and compassion to the poor”: She was a soul filled with one desire: “ to quench his thirst for love His this for love and for souls”.

This luminous messenger of God’s love was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, a city situated at the crossroads of the Balkans. The youngest of the children born to Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu, she was baptised Gonxha Agnes, received her First Communion at the age of five and a half and was confirmed in November 1916. Her father’s sudden death when Gonxha was about eight years old left the family in financial straits. Drane raised her children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s character and vocation. Gonxha’s religious formation developed further through her extensive involvement in the vibrant Jesuit parish of the Sacred Heart.At the age of eighteen, moved by the desire to become a missionary, Gonxha left her home in September 1928 to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Ireland. There she received the name of  Sister Maria Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux. In December, she departed for India, arriving in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary’s School for girls. On 24 March 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 with deep love for her religious sisters and her students, mother Teresa’s twenty years in Loreto were filled with genuine happiness. Noted 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.On 10 September 1946 during the train ride from Calcutta To Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Mother received her “inspiration” her “call within a call”. On that day, in a way she would never explain, Jesus’ thirst for love and for souls so penetrated her heart that the desire to satiate His thirst became the driving force of her life. Over the course of the next weeks and months, by means of interior locutions and visions, Jesus revealed to her the desire of His Heart for “victims of love” who would radiate His love on souls”. “Come be My light”. He begged her . “I cannot go alone”. He revealed his pain at the neglect of the poor, his sorrow at their ignorance of Him and His longing for their love. He asked Mother Teresa To establish a religious community, the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor : Nearly two years of testing and discernment passed before Mother Teresa received permission to begin. On 17 August 1948, She dressed for the first time in a white, blue-bordered sari and passed through the gates of her beloved Loreto convent to enter the world of the poor.After a short  course with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta  and found temporary lodging with Little Sisters of the Poor. On 21 December she went for the first time to the slums. She visited families, washed the sores of some children, cared for an old man lying sick on the road and nursed a woman dying of hunger and TB. She started each day in communion with Jesus in the Eucharist and then went out, rosary in her hand, to find and serve Him in “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for”. After some months, she was joined by a number of her former students.On 7 October 1950 the new congregation of the Missionaries of charity was officially established in the Archdiocese of Calcutta. By the early 1960s, Mother Teresa began to send her sisters to other parts of India. After the Decree of Praise was granted to the Congregation by Pope Paul VI in February 1965, she opened a house in Venezuela. It was soon followed by foundations in Rome and Tanzania and, eventually, in every continent.Starting in 1980 and continuing through the 1990s, Mother Teresa opened houses in almost all the communist countries, including the former Soviet Union, Albania and Cuba.  In order to respond better to both the physical and spiritual needs of the poor, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963, the contemplative branch of the Sisters in 1976, the contemplative brothers in1979, and the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984. Yet her inspiration was not limited to those with religious vocations. She formed the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa and The Sick and Suffering Co-Workers : people of many faiths and nationalities with whom she shared her spirit of prayer, simplicity, sacrifice and her apostolate of humble works of love. The spirit later inspired the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In answer to the requests of many priests, Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests in 1981 as a “little way of holiness” for those priests desiring to share in her charisma and spirit.During these years of rapid growth, the world began to focus its attention on Mother Teresa and the work she had started. Numerous awards – beginning with the Indian Padmashri Award in 1962 and notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 – honoured her work, while an increasingly interested media began to follow her activities. She received both prizes and attention “for the glory of God and the name of the poor”.The whole of Mother Teresa’s life and labour bore witness to the joy of loving, the greatness and dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully and with love, and the surpassing worth of friendship with God. But there was another heroic side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death. Hidden from all eyes , hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life marked by an experience of a deep, , painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience “the darkness”. The “painful night” of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever more profound union with God. Through this darkness she mystically participated in the thirst of Jesus. His painful and burning longing for love and shared in the interior desolation of the poor.During the last years of her life, despite increasingly severe health problems, Mother Teresa continued to govern her Society and respond to the needs of the poor and the Church. By 1997, mother Teresa’s sisters numbered nearly 4,000 and were established in 610 foundations in 123 countries of the world in March  1997, she blessed the newly-elected successor as Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity and then made one more trip abroad. After meeting Pope John Paul II for the last time, she returned to Calcutta and spent her final weeks receiving visitors and instructing her Sisters. On 5 September Mother Teresa’s earthly life came to an end. She was given the honour of a state funeral by the Government of India and her body was buried in the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity. Her tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for people of all faiths, rich and poor alike. Mother Teresa left a testament of unshakable faith, invincible hope and extraordinary charity. Her response to Jesus’ plea,” Come be My light” made her a Missionary of Charity, a “mother to the poor”, a symbol of compassion to the world, and a living witness to the thirsting love of God.Less than two years after her death, in view of mother Teresa’s widespread reputation of holiness and the favours being reported, Pope John Paul II permitted the opening of her Cause of Canonization. 20 December 2002 he approved the decrees confirming her heroic virtue and a miracle attributed to her intercession. On 19 October 2003, The Holy Father beatified Mother Teresa before a joyful and prayerful crowd of at least 300,000 assembled in St. Peter’s Square in a spirit of thanksgiving to God for the gift of her life and holiness. The gathering reflected all the diversity of the world which Mother Teresa had touched in her life, united there because of the loving influence of one rightly called “Mother”.