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Mother
Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje*, Macedonia,
on August 27, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve,
she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread
the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje
and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in
India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on
May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa
taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering
and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a
deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her
superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working
among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although
she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started
an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary
helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made
it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.
On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received
permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The
Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care
for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the
Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of
Pope Paul VI.
Today the order comprises Active and
Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries.
In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the
Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the
Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the
Priest branch was established.
The Society of Missionaries has spread all
over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern
European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of
the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural
catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for
refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and
Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics,
homeless, and AIDS sufferers.
The Missionaries of Charity throughout the
world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official
International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there
were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along
with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to
follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.
Mother Teresa's work has been recognised
and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number
of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace
Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of
international peace and understanding (1972). She also received
the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay
awards.
From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1971-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997
This autobiography/biography was first
published in the book series Les
Prix Nobel.
It was later ed and republished in Nobel
Lectures.
To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. Mother Teresa frequently spoke against abortion and artificial contraception in meetings with high level government officials. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, she declared, "I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself ... Because if a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you kill me - there is nothing between."[10]
On February 3, 1994 at a National Prayer Breakfast, sponsored by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, in Washington, DC, Mother Teresa challenged the audience on such topics as family life and abortion. She said, "Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child."[11]
In the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War, it was determined that more than 450,000 women in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had been systematically raped, giving birth to a few thousand war-babies. She asserted her rejection of abortion by publicly renouncing abortion as an option and by calling upon the women left behind to keep their unborn children. She characterized her views later when asked in 1993 about a 14-year-old rape victim in Ireland, "Abortion can never be necessary... because it is pure killing."
While this stance is in line with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which asserts natural family planning is the only acceptable form of birth control,[12] her critics assert that Teresa dogmatically refused to acknowledge the related problems of overpopulation, especially in cities like Calcutta.[citation needed]
The Vatican and influential leaders of the Roman Catholic Church have also repeatedly denied the existence of an overpopulation problem and Catholic theology teaches that even in the face of such a problem abortion and contraception [13] are an unacceptable alternative. Teresa was a strong believer in this mainstream Catholic view. [14]
Teresa also campaigned tirelessly against divorce, which she understood to be an immoral abomination in accordance with the teaching of her faith, insisting it should be made illegal; she organized an unsuccessful campaign to keep the Irish ban on divorce in 1996. However, some believe she contradicted this belief when she told the Ladies Home Journal that with respect to Prince Charles and Princess Diana, "It is a good thing that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow."[15]
Teresa believed firmly in forgiveness. As she once said "I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand."
Teresa also believed in ecumenism, as she stated "There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs — all different religions. But they all come to our prayers." The Roman Catholic view on ecumenism is that unity must be viewed in the context of trying to bring all people into the fullest of unity with Christ and the one true Catholic Church He is believed to have founded. [16]""In October, 1950 Teresa received Vatican permission to start her own order, which the Vatican originally labeled as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, but which later became known as the Missionaries of Charity, whose mission was to care for (in her own words) "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers,
all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout
society, people that have become a burden to the society and are
shunned by everyone." It began as a small Order with 12 members in
Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS
hospices, and charity centres worldwide, and caring for refugees, the
blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of
floods, epidemics and famine in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North
America, Poland, and Australia.
With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She soon after opened another hospice, Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for lepers
called Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), and an orphanage. The order soon
began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the
1960s had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses all over India.
In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise, Pope Paul VI
granted Mother Teresa's request to expand her order to other countries.
Teresa's order started to rapidly grow, with new homes opening all over
the globe. The order's first house outside India was in Venezuela, and others followed in Rome and Tanzania, and eventually in many countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe, including Albania. In addition, the first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx, New York.
By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries.
Today over one million workers worldwide are employed by the
Missionaries of Charity. ""Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.
Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
Good works are links that form a chain of love.
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
I think I'm more difficult than critical.
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.
It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.
It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.
Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Peace begins with a smile.
So many signatures for such a small heart.
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.
The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.
The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.
There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.
There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.
We are all pencils in the hand of God.
We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so long,with so little,we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. |
