Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta
(Feast: 5 September)
Agnes, her baptismal name, was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia, into a family of Albanian origin. At the age of twelve she discovered her vocation: God wanted her to give her life to him. At eighteen she left her family to join the Loreto Sisters, a congregation of Irish origin working especially in India.
She made her religious vows on 24 May 1931 and spent her first years teaching at Saint Mary’s School in a district of Calcutta.
At the heart of poverty and suffering, Mother Teresa heard the call to become one of the poor and to be united with them, and there she began an open-air school.
In 1950 she received permission to found a diocesan congregation whose aim was to care for all those rejected and abandoned by society, who suffer greatly in body and spirit because of it. So the Missionaries of Charity came into being. The first home for the dying opened in 1952, and in the years that followed, because of the growing number of abandoned adults and children, the congregation opened many homes for people with leprosy, orphanages and free centres in disused temples and warehouses. About ten years later, the work of the Missionaries of Charity spread throughout the world, including Australia, Europe, Africa, the United States and the Middle East.
By 1996 the congregation had 517 houses and centres in more than a hundred countries. Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and used her moral authority to draw the world’s attention to very important moral and social issues. She believed that the problem of poverty lies not only in deprivation but also in not knowing the love of Jesus.
After a first heart attack in 1983 her health weakened, and from 1995 it declined seriously. After malaria and cardiac arrest, she stepped down as head of the congregation in March 1997, and died on 5 September 1997, just days after her eighty-seventh birthday.
For many people, Mother Teresa of Calcutta is the feminine face of the contemporary Catholic Church. She put herself at the service of those whom society had pushed to the margins, the poorest of the poor, and she turned love into action. Through her generosity of spirit she drew many people to follow her path, and she inspired the young people of the world to “love until it hurts”, and so to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, giving their lives for others. Mother Teresa knew no limits to the love of Christ, and she expressed it herself in her total dedication to the poorest of the poor.
May her prayers be with us.
