Catholic Gifts and More

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

5 September

Born in Albania in 1910, Mother Teresa of Calcutta won recognition throughout the world for her work among the poorest of the poor.

Gonxha (Agnes) Bojaxhiu was the youngest of the three children. For a time, the family lived comfortably, and her father's construction business thrived. But life changed overnight following his unexpected death.

During her years in school Agnes participated in a Catholic sodality and showed a strong interest in the foreign missions. At 18 she entered the Loretto

Sisters of Dublin. In 1928 she said goodbye to her mother for the final time and made her way to a new land and a new life. The following year she was sent to Darjeeling, India. There she chose the name Teresa and prepared for a life of service. She was assigned to a high school for girls in Calcutta, where she taught history and geography to the daughters of the wealthy. But she could not escape the realities around her: "the poverty, the suffering, the overwhelming numbers of destitute people."

In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Sister Teresa heard within her spirit what she later explained as: "a call within a call. The message was clear. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them." She also heard a call to give up her life with the Sisters of Loretto and, instead, to "follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor."

After receiving permission to leave Loretto, establish a new religious community and undertake her new work, she took a nursing course for several months. She returned to Calcutta, where she lived in the slums and opened a school for poor children. Dressed in a white sari and sandals (the ordinary dress of an Indian woman) she soon began getting to know her neighbors-especially the poor and sick - and getting to know their needs through visits.

The work was exhausting, but she was not alone for long. Volunteers, some of them former students, joined her in the work, becoming the core of the Missionaries of Charity. Others donated food, clothing, supplies, the use of buildings. In 1952 the city of Calcutta gave Mother Teresa a former hostel, which became a home for the dying and the destitute. As the Order expanded, services were also offered to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, the aging and street people. Mother Teresa and her nuns opened more homes for the dying, treatment centers and hospitals for those suffering from leprosy, AIDS—the list is endless.

Until her death in 1997, Mother Teresa continued her work among the poorest of the poor, depending on God for all of her needs. In her own eyes she was "God's pencil—a tiny bit of pencil with which he writes what he likes." Despite years of strenuous physical, emotional and spiritual work, Mother Teresa seemed unstoppable. Though frail and bent, with numerous ailments, she always returned to her work, to those who received her compassionate care for more than 50 years.

Finally, on September 5, 1997, after finishing her dinner and prayers, her weakened heart gave Mother Teresa back to the God who was the very center of her life.  Pope John Paul II declared her blessed—beatified— on October 19, 2003, prompting waves of applause before the 300,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. In his homily, the Holy Father called Mother Teresa "one of the most relevant personalities of our age" and "an icon of the Good Samaritan." Her life, he said, was "a bold proclamation of the Gospel."

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us