Every child is a child of God’ as mother Teresa quoted. On September 5th every year we celebrate girl child day, teachers’ day and the feast of mother Teresa as she is fondly known. Mother Teresa was born in Skopje on 26 August 1910. She was baptized the very next day and she always called this day as a ‘true birthday’. Her baptismal name was Agnes Gonxha (means little flower) Bojaxhiu. Indeed compared to a rose that bloomed, its fragrance spread across the nations and continues to bless the world. That rose is mother Teresa. She lives in the heart of millions as the mirror that reflected the face of God.
Agnes grew up in the Roman Catholic Church as her parents were devout Catholics. Her father, Nikolle, died when she was eight and was raised by her mother who was pious and compassionate and greatly influenced her daughter to be committed to charity. They were not so wealthy but her mother was always welcoming the homeless and poor in the city to dine with them. “My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others”, she always told her daughter. Agnes was a good singer and in the choir she was often asked to sing solos. Every year with the parish, she would make an annual pilgrimage to the church of the black Madonna in Letrice. It was on one such trip at the age of 12 that she felt a call to a religious life.
On 15th August 1928, while praying at this shrine, 18 years old Agnes, decided to devote her life to God at an early age to become a nun. She set off to Ireland to join the sisters of Loreto in Dublin. It was there that she took the name, sister Mary Teresa because she was inspired by St. Teresa of child Jesus. She learnt English and Bengali in order to serve in India. She arrived in India in 1929, and began training to be a nun on 24th may, 1931.
Sr. Teresa served as a teacher at the Loreto Convent School in Calcutta for almost twenty years and in 1944 was appointed headmistress. She taught Geography and history. She was deeply concerned by great poverty around her. She was a great inspiration for her students who first joined her.
On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa heard the voice of God which she called the ‘call within a call’. This would forever transform her life. She was travelling in a train from Calcutta to Darjeeling when she heard Jesus tell her, “to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them”. She knew she must give up the comforts of the teacher and live in the slums of Calcutta.
At first, everyone was suspicious why this foreigner was there living in their poverty. As they saw how she was doing good, they welcomed her. She started teaching the children in the slums without the facilities of classroom. Then she started attending to the medical needs of the people. In 1949, she was joined by a few young women and this was the beginning of the Missionaries of Charity to work for the ‘poorest among the poor’.
In 1952, mother Teresa opened the first home for the dying at Kalighat, the home for the pure heart (Nirmal Hriday). The homeless dying were brought here to be cared for and to die with dignity. “A beautiful death”, she said, “is for people who lived like animals, to die like angels- loved and wanted”. Very soon she opened a home for those suffering from leprosy. This home was called Santi Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity specially took care of abandoned children and in 1955, she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan.
By 1997, the ‘Missionaries of Charity’ had grown to more than 4,000 sisters and 450 brothers and a million lay helpers, running orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centers worldwide, and caring for refugees, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of flood, epidemics and famine.
Whenever there were suffering people, mother Teresa and her sisters were present to serve them. They started homes for lepers, unwanted, homeless children abandoned by families and suffering much from AIDS. Even where there was war and the government was against Christianity, they would invite mother Teresa. Wherever she went, the first thing she would do was to visit a Chapel where the sisters could adore the Eucharistic Jesus.
In 1982, at the height of the siege of Beirut, mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients.
WHEN GOD GUIDES A PERSON, HE LEADS THEM TO SOMETHING GREAT AND NEW. THE WHOLE WORLD WILL BE ASTOUNDED.
Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome in 1983. On March 13, 1997, she stepped down from her position as the head of the ‘Missionaries of Charity’. She died on 5th September 1997. Later the Catholic Church praised God for the gift of Mother Teresa and was raised her to the glory of the altar as a Saint Teresa on 4th September, 2016 by Pope Francis.
Mother Teresa as a little girl was always respectful towards her parents and family members, devoured to God and spent her childhood in love of God and love of neighbors. As a teacher she dispelled the darkness from the mind of the pupils and thus led them through the right path to acquire knowledge. She was a teacher with a difference. Mother Teresa as a Roman Catholic nun, obeyed her vows but she was called “mother” as this is a common name for a nun who is the superior of a congregation or order. Mother Teresa as a nun became a mother to the orphans, homeless, sick and the dying. She shared God’s love to them and never abandoned them. She became the face of a child to the children, a face of a teacher to the students and a face of a mother to the orphans.
-Mary Pinheiro