Synopsis
Profile
Catholic nun, missionary. Mother Teresa was born August 26,
1910 in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia, which
was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time of her birth and was
conquered by the Kingdom of Serbia in 1912, when she was two years old.
On August 27, 1910, a date frequently mistaken for her birthday, she was
baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Mother Teresa's parents, Nikola and
Drana Bojaxhiu, were of Albanian descent; her father was an entrepreneur
who worked as a construction contractor and a trader of medicines and
other goods. The Bojaxhius were a devoutly Catholic family, and Nikola
Bojaxhiu was deeply involved in the local church as well as in city
politics as a vocal proponent of Albanian independence.In 1919, when Mother Teresa was only eight years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died. While the cause of his death remains unknown, many have speculated that political enemies poisoned him. In the aftermath of her father's death, Mother Teresa became extraordinarily close to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a deep commitment to charity. Although by no means wealthy, Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city's destitute to dine with her family. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter. When Mother Teresa asked who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded, "Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people."
Mother Teresa attended a convent-run primary school and then a state-run secondary school. As a girl Mother Teresa sang in the local Sacred Heart choir and was often asked to sing solos. The congregation made an annual pilgrimage to the chapel of the Madonna of Letnice atop Black Mountain in Skopje, and it was on one such trip at the age of twelve that Mother Teresa first felt a calling to a religious life. Six years later, in 1928, an 18-year-old Agnes Bojaxhiu decided to become a nun and set off for Ireland to join the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was there that she took the name Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. A year later, she traveled on to Darjeeling, India for the novitiate period; in May 1931, Mother Teresa made her First Profession of Vows. Afterward she was sent to Calcutta, where she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary's High School for Girls, a school run by the Loreto Sisters and dedicated to teaching girls from the city's poorest Bengali families. Mother Teresa learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi fluently as she taught geography and history and dedicated herself to alleviating the girls' poverty through education.
On May 24, 1937, she took her Final Profession of Vows to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. As was the custom for Loreto nuns, she took on the title of "mother" upon making her final vows and thus became known as Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa continued to teach at Saint Mary's, and in 1944 she became the school's principal. Through her kindness, generosity and unfailing commitment to her students' education, she sought to lead them to a life of devotion to Christ. "Give me the strength to be ever the light of their lives, so that I may lead them at last to you," she wrote in prayer.
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
Mother Teresa
However, on September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced a second
calling that would forever transform her life. She was riding a train
from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when Christ spoke
to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of
Calcutta aiding the city's poorest and sickest people. "I want Indian
Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the
poor, the sick, the dying and the little children," she heard Christ say
to her on the train that day. "You are I know the most incapable person
— weak and sinful but just because you are that — I want to use You for
My glory. Wilt thou refuse?"
Since Mother Teresa had taken a vow of obedience, she could not leave
her convent without official permission. After nearly a year and a half
of lobbying, in January 1948 she finally received approval from the
local Archbishop Ferdinand Périer to pursue this new calling. That
August, wearing the blue and white sari that she would always wear in
public for the rest of her life, she left the Loreto convent and
wandered out into the city. After six months of basic medical training,
she voyaged for the first time into Calcutta's slums with no more
specific goal than to aid "the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for."
Mother Teresa quickly translated this somewhat vague calling into
concrete actions to help the city's poor. She began an open-air school
and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated building
she convinced the city government to donate to her cause. In October
1950, she won canonical recognition for a new congregation, the
Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only twelve members —
most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary's School. As the
ranks of her congregation swelled and donations poured in from around
India and across the globe, the scope of Mother Teresa's charitable
activities expanded exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and
1960s, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a
family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.
In February 1965, Pope John Paul VI bestowed the Decree of Praise upon
the Missionaries of Charity, which prompted Mother Teresa to begin
expanding internationally. by the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered
over 4,000 — in addition to thousands more lay volunteers — with 610
foundations in 123 countries on all seven continents. In 1971, Mother
Teresa traveled to New York City where she opened a soup kitchen as well
as a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS. The next year she
went to Beirut, Lebanon,
where she crossed frequently between Christian East Beirut and Muslim
West Beirut to aid children of both faiths. Mother Teresa has received
various honors for her tireless and effective charity. She was awarded
"Jewel of India," the highest honor bestowed on Indian civilians, as
well as the now-defunct Soviet Union's Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace
Committee. Then, in 1979, Mother Teresa won her highest honor when she
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work "in
bringing help to suffering humanity."
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment