Born Agnes Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland at the age of 18. Known then as Sister Teresa, her journey in her faith would take her to India and onward to Darjeeling, where she continued her religious vows. Arriving in Calcutta, she was extremely moved by the sick and dying on the city's streets. It was there that she founded Missionaries of Charity, her lifelong work. She started the Kalighat Home for the Dying where she would gather the dying from the streets to give them home care during their last days. Mother Teresa continued to tend to the sick, the dying and the homeless until her death in 1997 following a prolonged illness.
Journey of Mother Teresa
It all began in 1910 at the Ãsküb, Ottoman Empire (now Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia); a child named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born. Her name Gonxha literally means "rosebud" or "little flower" in Albanian. Although she was born on 26 August, she considered 27 August, the day she was baptized, to be her "true birthday". She was the youngest among the children of the family from Shkodër, Albania and the daughter of Nikollë and Drana Bojaxhiu. Her father, who was involved in Albanian politics, died in 1919 when she was eight years old. After her father's death, her mother raised her as a Roman Catholic. Her father, Nikollë Bojaxhiu (his name means 'painter') was of Kosovar Albanian origin possibly stemming from Prizren, Kosovo while her mother's origin was possibly from a village near Äakovica, Kosovo.
Joan Graff Clucas's biography tells that in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal and by age of 12 she was influenced that she should commit herself to a religious life. Her final decision was taken on August 15, 1928, while praying at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Letnice, where she always went on pilgrimage. Agnes left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary and because of that she never again saw her mother or sister.
At first, Agnes went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English. The language used by Sisters of Loreto was used to teach school children in India. She went to India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan Mountains where she learnt Bengali and taught at the St. Teresa's School, a schoolhouse close to her convent. 24 May 1931, Agnes took her first religious vows as a nun. At that time she chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries, but because one nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes decided for the Spanish spelling Teresa.
Agnes took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta. For almost twenty years Teresa served the school and was appointed headmistress in 1944. Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, the poverty of Calcutta people was increasingly disturbing her. The Bengal food shortage in the year 1943 brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into hopelessness and horror.Â
Agnes as Mother Teresa
"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." - Mother Teresa
Teresa said that she experienced what she described later as "the call within the call" while travelling by train to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat on 10 September 1946. As one author later noted, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa". She started in 1948 when she worked as a missionary with the poor, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent a few months in Patna to have a basic medical training in the Holy Family Hospital and then ventured out into the slums. To begin with, Mother Teresa started a school in Motijhil (Calcutta); soon she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. In the beginning of 1949 she was joined in her effort by a group of young women and laid the foundations to form a new religious community serving the "poorest among the poor".
Her efforts promptly caught the mind of Indian officials as well as the prime minister who expressed his positive reception. Her difficulties have been listed in her diary especially in her first year of burdened. She wrote 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 does whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come." - Mother Teresa Quote
Mother Teresa had no earnings and had no choice but to begged food and supplies. She experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the ease of convent life throughout these early months.
Something Beautiful For God
"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. Â If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. Â The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do well anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway." Â â Mother Teresa quote
Mother Teresa loves God very much and so with God's creation. She offered herself to Christ and served God as well as the people. Mother Teresa was an Indian citizenship and a nun of a Roman Catholic of Albanian society; she founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950. Mother Teresa ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first was in India and then in other countries for 45 years.
In the 1970s, Malcolm Muggeridge documented this favorably and wrote a book "Something Beautiful for God". Mother Teresa became well-known internationally for her humanitarian work and advocacy for the rights of the poor and helpless. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity nonstop to grow during her life-time and at the time of her death she had been through 610 missions in 123 countries including hospitals and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools. Many people were inspired by her work including governments, charity organizations and prominent individuals.
Mother Teresa received numerous awards, including the Indian government's Bharat Ratna (1980) and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She remains one of the most admired figures in recent history, with even such religiously indifferent figures as Scott Adams and Dave Barry using her as a model of virtue. In 2010 on the 100th anniversary of her birth, she was honored around the world, and her work praised by Indian President Pratibha Patil. Mother Teresa's philosophy and implementation have faced some criticism. Catholic newspaper editor David Scott wrote that Mother Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive rather than dealing with poverty itself.
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