MOTHER TERESA (Saint Teresa of Calcutta)

By Ron Simpson

Background:

Born August 26, 1910 in Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Albanian (known today as Skopje, Macedonia). Died September 5, 1997 (the day we celebrate her Feast) and canonized on September 4, 2016.

Her Life:

At 18 years of age, she left home and joined the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland with the intent of becoming a missionary and learning the English language. A year later in 1929 she relocated to India and taught at St. Teresa’s School near her convent. She took her first religious vows on May 24, 1931. Six years later she took her solemn vows. While she enjoyed teaching, she became increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. Travelling by train to Darjeeling on September 10, 1946, she was inspired by the call of her inner conscience deciding to leave the Loreto Order. Over the next four years she worked tirelessly with the poor and on October 7, 1950 she received permission from the Vatican and called her congregation the “Missionaries of Charity”.

Over the next forty-seven years until her death, the Congregation grew with more and more women joining her cause with more than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centres worldwide, caring for refugees and those with leprosy and tuberculosis, the blind, the disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and the homeless and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine.

Within ten years of Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools, and shelters in 120 countries.

Awards:

During her lifetime, Mother Teresa would receive many awards from many different organizations and governments from around the world. Three notable awards were the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, commending her work with the poor, display of Christian charity and efforts for peace given by Pope Paul VI. The Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 followed by the Bharat Ratna (India’s highest civilian award) in 1980.

However, on many occasions when receiving awards, Mother Teresa would challenge her audience to “know poor people in your own home and local neighbourhood and the poor will help us grow in sanctity, for they are Christ in the guise of distress.” When receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, she singled out abortion as “the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child – what is left for me to kill you and you kill me – there is nothing between.”

Her Personal Story:

In her book “Come Be My Light”, Mother Teresa talks at length about the darkness that she first felt within her soul from the beginning of her mission with the poor. This darkness continued throughout her life and described a brief period of renewed faith when, after Pope Pius’s XII death in 1958, she was praying for him and was relieved of “the long darkness: that strange suffering.” However, within five weeks her spiritual dryness returned. In her book are complied many letters she wrote to her confessors and superiors over a 66-year period, most notably to Calcutta Archbishop Ferdinand Perier and Jesuit priest Celeste van Exem. Pope Benedict XVI mentioned Mother Teresa in his first encyclical illustrating the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not distract from effective and loving service to our neighbour but is in fact the inexhaustible source of that service.

On September 4, 2016, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa as St. Teresa of Calcutta in a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of people witnessed the ceremony, including 15 government delegations and 1,500 homeless people from across Italy. Televised live, it was streamed too Skopje, Teresa’s hometown. In India, a special Mass was celebrated by the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata.

My Own Reflection:

Growing up I had heard much about Mother Teresa and followed her life, like most people, through newspapers, television, etc. It was not until I read “The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” in her book titled “Come Be My Light” where I learned about her own spiritual heights or her struggles. I read the moving chronicle of her spiritual journey which included moments, indeed years, of utter desolation while serving our Lord. Mother Teresa inspired me in that she gave herself completely to the Lord to minister to the poorest of the poor and in spite of the many years of personal darkness, her inner life burned with the fire of charity never giving up fulfilling God’s plan for her.