PERSONALITY OF THIS MONTH - PART I

Mother Teresa
"The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven....And St. Peter said, 'Go back to Earth, there are no slums up here."

These words, once spoken by Mother Teresa, vividly recall the life of the late Roman Catholic nun and missionary known as "the Saint of the Gutters." For Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to the succor of the sick and the outcast, earthly sufferers were nothing less than Christ in "distressing disguise."


EARLY LIFE

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on 26 August 1910, in Skopje, which today is capital of the Republic of Macedonia. She was the youngest of the children of an Albanian family from Shkodër, born to Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu. Nikola was involved in the politics of the day and devoted to the Albanian Cause. After a political meeting he fell ill and died. Agnes at the time was about eight years old. After her father's death she was raised as a Roman Catholic by her mother. According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, during her early years, Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service, and by the time she was twelve, she was convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. She left her home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. Agnes would never again set eyes on her mother or sister.

Agnes initially went to the

Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland in order to learn English, which was the language the Sisters of Loreto used when instructing school children in India. Arriving in India in 1929, she began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains. She took her first vows as a nun on 24 May 1931. At that time she chose the name Teresa after the patron saint of missionaries. She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in eastern Calcutta.

Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror

MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY

On September 10, 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" while traveling to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith." She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton chira decorated with a blue border and then venturing out into the slums." Initially she started a school in Motijhil; shortly thereafter, she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his appreciation.

Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulties. She had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies. Teresa experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months. She recorded in her diary:
“
Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then the comfort of Loreto [her former order] came to tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,' the Tempter kept on saying ... Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.
”

Teresa received Vatican permission on October 7, 1950 to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity.Its mission was to care for, in her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It began as a small order with 13 members in Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine.

In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of

Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels — loved and wanted."


NOBEL LECTURE

TO LISTEN TO THE NOBEL LECTURE BY MOTHER VISIT http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html

"As we have gathered here together to thank God for the Nobel Peace Prize I think it will be beautiful that we pray the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi which always surprises me very much - we pray this prayer every day after Holy Communion, because it is very fitting for each one of us, and I always wonder that 4-500 years ago as St. Francis of Assisi composed this prayer that they had the same difficulties that we have today, as we compose this prayer that fits very nicely for us also. I think some of you already have got it - so we will pray together..."

Through the years, Mother Teresa's fame grew, as did the magnitude of her deeds ...

· In 1950, the community she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, was officially recognized by the Archdiocese of Calcutta. The Vatican recognized the organization as a pontifical congregation the same year. What began as an order with 12 members has grown to more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices and other charity centers worldwide.

· In 1952, she established a home for the dying poor -- the Nirmal Hriday (or "Pure Heart") Home for Dying Destitutes. There, homeless people -- uncared for and unacceptable at other institutions -- were washed, fed and allowed to die with dignity.

· In 1979, she won the Nobel Peace Prize. Accepting the award in the name of the "unwanted, unloved and uncared for," Mother Teresa wore the same $1 white sari she had adopted when she founded her order. It was to identify herself with the poor.

· When Pope Paul VI gave her a white Lincoln Continental, she auctioned the car, using the money to establish a leper colony in West Bengal.

· In 1982, during the siege of Beirut, she convinced the Israeli army and Palestinian guerillas to stop shooting long enough for her to rescue 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital.

· When the walls of Eastern Europe collapsed, she expanded her efforts to communist countries that had shunned her, embarking on dozens of projects.

"There are many people to do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things. These very humble work, that is where you and I must be."- Mother Teresa.

References:

www.wikipedia.org
www.nobelprize.org
www.cnn.com
www.pbs.org