MOTHER TERESA

EARLY LIFE

Mother Teresa was born on 26 August 1910 to Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu in the city of Skopje, which
today is the capital of North Macedonia. They had her baptized the day after she was born and gave
her the name Gonxha Agnes (meaning 'flower bud' in Albanian). She was the youngest of five
children. Her eldest sister, Age, was seven at the time, and her brother Lazar was two years old. The
two other children had died as infants.

Their father was a merchant and town council member. Their mother, lovingly called 'Nane Loke'
(meaning 'mother of my soul' in Albanian), was a devout woman who taught her children to pray,
know, and love God, to love their neighbors, not to speak badly about others, waste things or time,
tell lies, and to be careful in choosing good friends.

When Gonxha was nine, her father died suddenly. The months and years that followed were difficult
for her mother. She had to provide food, clothing and other necessities and see to the education of
her children. She began selling embroided cloth. Through her skill and hard work, she earned enough
money to buy what they needed. These hard times drew her and her three children even closer to
each other and they were a very happy family.

Gonxha was lively, pretty, studious and hardworking. She especially loved to read, sing and act. She
and her sister Age, were the main voices of the choir at Sacred Heart Church. She went almost every
day with her mother to pray in the Church. Her love for God grew strong and she wanted all people
to love Him and to be as happy as she was.

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GOD’S CALL AND COMING TO INDIA

At the age of twelve Gonxha first heard, in her heart, God calling her to follow Him. Years later, when
people asked her about this, she said:

"I knew I had a vocation to the poor. I wanted to be a missionary, I wanted to go out and give the life
of Christ to the people in the missionary countries."

When she was eighteen years old, she wrote to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the "Loreto
Sisters"), asking to join them. The reason she chose this order of nuns was because they had a
mission in India. Before leaving, her mother gave her this advice:

"Put your hand in His hand (Jesus') and walk all alone with Him and never look back."

After a tearful goodbye at the train station, she courageously set out for Rathfarnham Abbey in
Dublin, Ireland on September 1928. There she spent two months learning English. She also received
a new name - "Sister Teresa" after St. Thérèse de Lisieux, as a sign that she was beginning a new life.

From Ireland, Sister Teresa and three other young sisters, boarded a ship to the Loreto convent in
Bengal. They began their journey in early December 1928, sailing through the Mediterranean Sea,
the Suez Canal, and into the Red Sea. They made stops in Colombo and Madras before arriving in
Calcutta on January 6, 1929.

"With indescribable happiness, we put our feet on Bengal's soil, Sister Teresa wrote.

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SISTER TERESA AS A LORETO NUN

Sister Teresa was then sent to Darjeeling. There she spent two years as a novice, praying, studying for
her life as a religious sister. She also needed to learn the language of the people and picked up
Bengali and Hindi easily.

On 25 May 1931, she made her first vows. She promised God that she would live a life of poverty,
chastity and obedience and would devote herself to teaching children. These vows were for one year,
then she would take them again. She wore a long black habit and received a black veil to cover her
head to show that she was consecrated to God. She said that it was "the greatest day of my life : that
on which I became wholly Christ's."

Soon after she made her first vows, Sister Teresa was sent to the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta.
She taught geography and catechism in St. Mary's Bengali Medium School. She was an excellent
teacher, strict but very kind; her students loved her. She loved to speak to them about God and how
much He loved them. She taught them also the value of making sacrifices to show their love for God
in return. When they had free time, Sister Teresa took some of her students to the slums to visit the
poor. And they often used to share their snacks with poor children.

On 24 May 1937, she made her final vows. This time she promised God to live poverty, chastity and
obedience for the rest of her life. Now there was no turning back. Her whole life was to be "only all
for Jesus". From this day on, she was no longer called "Sister Teresa" but "Mother Teresa".

She continued teaching and then in 1944 became principal of St. Mary's School. She was also put in
charge of the Daughters of St. Anne, the community of Indian religious sisters who were connected
with the congregation of Loreto.

Mother Teresa was hardworking and good at organizing things. She had a good sense of humour, was
cheerful as she went about her work, and very generous; she always seemed to notice the needs of
others but bothered little about her own. Her sisters also noticed how quick she was to do things.
What they never knew was that in 1942 she had made a private vow, a special promise to God, not
to refuse God anything He asked of her. Mother Teresa loved God so much that she always wanted to
say "yes" to Him, even when it was hard, and she wanted to do whatever He asked as soon as
possible.

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A Call Within a Call

On 10 September, 1946, when Mother Teresa was thirty-six years old, she was in the train on her way
to Darjeeling to make her yearly retreat, where she would spend eight days in silence, praying to
God. On that train she experienced Jesus speaking to her. He was asking her to give up everything,
even Loreto, and follow Him into the slums, to serve Him in the people who had nothing and no one
and who were suffering so much- the poorest of the poor. Jesus was thirsting to love and be loved by
them. It was a new vocation, "a call within a call". She knew that it was God who was asking this of
her. Still, she was afraid - she didn't know how she could do what Jesus wanted but at the same time
she didn't want to say "no" to Him.

When she got back to Calcutta, Mother Teresa told Father Celeste Van Exem, the priest who was her
spiritual guide, about the inspiration she had received. He told her to wait and pray. For more than
six months Mother Teresa kept hearing Jesus speak to her. He told her:
"My little one - come, come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come, be My light. I cannot go
alone - they don't know Me - so they don't want Me."

Once she had a vision: she saw many very poor people and children calling out to her: "Come, come,
save us - bring us to Jesus." She also saw Mary, the mother of Jesus, who told her: "Carry Jesus to
them (the poor) - Fear not. Teach them to say the Rosary - the family Rosary - and all will be well.
Fear not - Jesus and I will be with you and your children." And she also saw Jesus on the Cross. He
was begging her not to refuse Him. He wanted her to begin a new congregation of sisters, who would
be called the "Missionaries of Charity"; they were to bring His love and compassion to the poor in
the slums.

Father Van Exem told Mother Teresa to talk to the Archbishop of Calcutta about it. She wrote to
Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, thinking he would say "yes" straight away, but he also told her to wait
and pray.

In August 1948, with the archbishop's approval and after speaking with her Loreto superiors, Mother
Teresa exchanged her black Loreto habit for a white cotton sari with a blue border and left the Loreto
convent to begin her new mission

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MOTHER TERESA’S MISSION IN CALCUTTA

Mother Teresa first went to Patna to stay with the Medical Mission Sisters so she could learn from
them how to nurse the sick and give injections, what medicines to give for different sicknesses and
how to clean and bandage wounds.

Mother Teresa finished the nursing training she needed and returned to Calcutta in December 1948.
As she had no place of her own, she stayed with the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic
nuns who take care of poor elderly people. On 21 December, Mother Teresa went out for the first
time to Taltala and began visiting families and the poor that were on the street. In the days that
followed, she went into the Pan Bagan, Motijhil and Tiljala slums, doing what she could to relieve the
sufferings of the very poor. The poverty and suffering she saw in the slums was dreadful. She cleaned
and bandaged wounds and gave medicine to those she could. She understood that these poor
suffering people could be made happy if God entered their lives more fully. By the first week of
January 1949, Mother Teresa had opened a dispensary and a school in Motijhil with the help of
volunteers.

In the meantime, Mother Teresa needed to find her own place to stay. She walked and walked until
her legs and arms ached. At last, she found a place at 14 Creek Lane, on the upper floor of a house
belonging to the Gomes' brothers. She moved in on February 1949

Mother Teresa kept praying to the Virgin Mary, to send other young women who would join her in
this new work. In March 1949, Subashini Das, a girl who had been one of her students at St. Mary’s
arrived. She took the name "Sister Agnes". The next to come was Magdalene Polton, who became
known as "Sister Gertrude". In the following months, more girls from Loreto joined the little Society
and by June 1950 there were twelve. On 7 October 1950, Archbishop Périer formally established the
small community of the Missionaries of Charity as a religious congregation in the archdiocese of
Calcutta.
In 1951, Mother Teresa took Indian citizenship as she wanted the country of the people she served to
be her own.

The work for the poorest of the poor began to grow. Mother Teresa and her young companions
carried Jesus into the "dark and unhappy homes" of the poor, bringing hope and joy into their lives.
Mother Teresa opened centres where the poor could receive food and medicines and started more
schools for the poor children in the slums. For Mother Teresa, each person was Jesus, even though
sometimes He was not very recognizable. She often reminded her sisters of Jesus' words from the
Gospel, "Whatever you did to the least of My brothers, you did to Me."

In the 1950s, thousands of people lived and died on the streets of Calcutta. The sisters would often
find people with wounds full of worms or their bodies eaten by rats, dying alone and uncared for.
Mother Teresa wanted a home where she could bring these sick and dying people and care for them
so that they could die with dignity and in peace with God. The City Corporation of Calcutta gave her
the use of one of the shelters for pilgrims at the Kali Temple. On 22 August 1952, Mother Teresa
opened the first home for the dying in Kalighat and named it "Nirmal Hriday" (meaning "pure
heart"). One of the patients there said to mother teresa, " I lived like an animal on the street, I die
like an angel, loved and cared for.” This home always had a special place in Teresa's heart. She
worked there every morning for many years. In later years she could only go on Sundays and she was
always the first to do the humblest work: cleaning the toilets and drains.

In their visits to the slums, Mother Teresa and her sisters found children suffering from malnutrition
because their parents were poor and didn't have enough food. They also found children who were
orphaned. Seeing the need of these little ones, Mother Teresa opened a home to care for them - this
was the first Shishu Bhavan. She later started a centre for leprosy patients where they could receive
medicine and treatment.

By 1953, the number of sisters has increased so much that there was not enough space in the 14
Creek Lane house. After some searching and much prayer, Mother Teresa obtained a bigger house at
54A Lower Circular Road (which was later called A.J.C. Bose Road), and she and the sisters moved
there in February 1953. This became the "motherhouse" of the Missionaries of Charity and
thousands of girls have lived, prayed and trained to become sisters there since then.

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MOTHER TERESA’S MISSION OUTSIDE CALCUTTA

As more girls continued to join the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa began to expand her work
outside of Calcutta. She took a group of sisters to open a house in Ranchi in May 1959. After this,
houses were opened in Delhi, Bombay, and Jhansi and more continued to open throughout India. On
1 February 1965, the young congregation came directly under the authority of the Pope. This meant
that Mother Teresa could begin missions in other countries. The first mission she opened outside of
India was in Venezuela in July 1965 and before long she had missions in many other countries of the
world. And so, the work spread through Calcutta to other parts of India and from India to more than
120 countries of the world.

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OTHER BRANCHES OF MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY

Young men also wanted to share in this work of loving service and so the Missionaries of Charity
Brothers were started in 1963. A branch of Contemplative Sisters, who could spend more time
praying for the poor, began in 1976 and a branch of Contemplative Brothers in 1979. Missionaries of
Charity Fathers, a branch for priests, was founded in 1984. In 1969, Mother Teresa's work attracted
people of all nationalities and religions who wanted to share the joy of serving the poor and so the
Co-Workers of Mother Teresa began. Later the Lay Missionaries of Charity as well as the Corpus
Movement for Priests became part of the large Missionary of Charity family.

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AWARDS AND SPEECHES

Mother Teresa's charitable work began to attract attention and she received many awards, the first
being the Padma Shri in 1962. She received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1972 and the Bharat
Ratna (the Jewel of India) in 1980. One award that caught the attention of the whole world was the
Nobel Peace Prize, which she received on 10 December 1979 in Oslo, Norway. She accepted it and
every award and honour (over 700 in her lifetime) not for herself but in the name of the poor.
Different organizations began to ask her to come and give speeches. This was not something Mother
Teresa enjoyed doing at all, but if it would help people come closer to God and become more aware
of the poor in their own places, she was willing to go. She was now often away from Calcutta,
traveling to all parts of the world to bring God's message of love and compassion.

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PHYSICAL PAIN

One early morning, when Mother Teresa was seventy- three years old, she fell from the bed and hurt
herself. This happened when she was visiting her sisters in Rome in 1983. They took her to the to be
checked and it was then that the doctor discovered that she had a serious heart problem. They gave
her medication but over the next years she had several heart attacks and had to receive a pacemaker.
This did not stop her. She would not say "no" to Jesus! As soon as she felt a little better, she was off
again, more foundations, giving speeches, taking every opportunity to proclaim, by her words and
actions, God's love, joy and peace to the people she met. She did not think of herself! As soon as she
knew there were poor people suffering in some part of the world because of disease, war,
earthquakes, floods or famine, she was there to offer help. It did not matter what caste, religion, or
nationality the people were - she saw everyone as a child of God and as her "brother", her "sister".
Everyone who met her knew that they were in the presence of a holy person. They could feel that
she was very close to God.

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SPIRITUAL PAIN

There was something, however, that the sisters and the people never knew about Mother Teresa.
They knew about the pain in her body but they never knew about the terrible pain she had in her
soul. She loved God with her whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and she used to feel God's great
love for her. Then everything changed. As soon as she began the work among the poor, she didn't
feel that God was very close to her anymore, even though she continued loving God just as much as
before. For many years she felt that God had abandoned her, that He didn't want her, even that He
didn't love her at all. But of course, He did. God was hiding His presence from her. He was letting her
share how He felt when He was dying on the Cross and how many of the poor people feel - lonely,
unwanted and unloved. She understood the poor so well because she experienced the same
rejection and loneliness as they did. Mother Teresa did not act on her feelings but kept on praying,
loving and serving God, and loving and serving her religious family and the poor. Her smile kept
anyone from guessing what she was feeling inside. All the while Jesus was very close to her, giving
her strength and shining through her.

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DEATH

As Mother Teresa got older, her health continued to get worse and worse. She wanted another sister
to take over as head of the Missionaries of Charity. On 13 March 1997, Sister Nirmala M.C. was
elected to be her successor as Superior General. Mother Teresa was filled with joy to give her
blessing to Sister Nirmala and to be freed from such a great responsibility. Less than six months later,
on 5 September 1997 at 9:30 p.m., Mother Teresa "went home to God" at the Motherhouse. She was
87 years old when she died. The news spread rapidly throughout India and the world. While her
body lay in state at St. Thomas Church, thousands of people came to pay their final respects.

The Government of India honoured her with a state funeral on 13 September 1997. Dignitaries from
India and around the world, together with the citizens of Kolkata, Bengal and other parts of India,
who loved and admired her and recognized the greatness of her mission, were present to pay their
homage. The poor and her Missionary of Charity family deeply mourned the loss of their beloved
Mother. Her body was buried in Motherhouse which quickly became a place of pilgrimage. On her
tomb were engraved the words of Jesus, "Love one another as I have loved you." This is what Mother
Teresa did all through her life.

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BEAUTIFICATION AND CANONIZATION

In 1999, Mother Teresa was posthumously honoured with the title "Servant of God" after her
nomination by the bishop in the diocese where she passed away, a process typically preceded by a
five-year waiting period after the person's death. Notably, Pope John Paul II waived three of these
five years, marking the first time in the modern canonization process that such an exception had
been made. This exceptional gesture acknowledged the profound impact of Mother Teresa's life and
work. Subsequently, information about her life and writings was collected to advance her cause to
the next stage.

In 2001, she was granted the title "Venerable Mother Teresa," after the Pope approved her list of
Heroic Virtues based on the recommendations of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. To
progress to beatification, the next stage in the canonization process, a documented miracle
attributed to her intercession was required. This miracle must be beyond scientific explanation and
undergo thorough investigation by the diocese where it occurred.

In 2002, the first miracle attributed to Mother Teresa's intercession was approved by Pope John Paul
II. Monika Besra, an individual from India, was miraculously cured of cancer on the first anniversary
of Mother Teresa's passing in 1998, a significant testament to her spiritual influence.

On October 19, 2003, Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II. However, the canonization
process required a second verified miracle attributed to her intercession.

In 2015, the second miracle was confirmed and approved by Pope Francis. A man in Brazil, suffering
from multiple brain tumours and who had been in a coma, made a remarkable recovery after his wife
prayed for the intercession of Blessed Mother Teresa to heal her husband.
Finally, on September 4, 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis at St. Peter's Square,
Vatican City State, Rome. Her feast is celebrated on 5th of September every year

VALUES OF MOTHER TERESA

“Do it Anyway” written by Mother Teresa reveals all her values:

People are often unreasonable, illogical,

and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse

you of selfish ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some

false friends and some true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,

people may cheat you.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,

someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,

they may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,

people will often forget tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,

and it may never be enough.
Give the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis

it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them
anyway.’
HOW CAN WE BECOME A SAINT?

In "Do it Anyway," Mother Teresa's words remind us that we shouldn't do good things just to get
noticed by people because it's God who truly judges our actions. Let's take a close look at what it
means to be a "saint":

Saints are people in heaven, whether the Church officially recognizes them or not. They become
saints by living very good and selfless lives, by sacrificing for others, or by even dying for their faith.
They set an example for others to follow.

So, you don't have to do extraordinary things to be a saint. If you live a good, kind, and selfless life,
you can be considered a saint, even if the Church doesn't give you that title. The Church knows there
are many good people in heaven who haven't been officially recognized as saints. So, we celebrate
All Saints Day in honour of all saints of the church deemed to have attained heaven, even if they are
not canonized.

In simple terms, you can go to heaven if you live a caring and selfless life, and you don't have to do
big and impressive things for that to happen. If we follow whatever Mother Teresa has written in “Do
It Anyway”, we can become a saint.