Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-97) Mother Teresa of Calcutta was one small woman who made a big difference in the lives of thousands and possibly millions of people. She was a nun of the Roman Catholic Church who founded a society called the Missionaries of Charity. They began by taking care of the sick, dying, orphans, widows, lepers and the abandoned and neglected poor of the city of Calcutta, India. Soon they expanded their work to other cities of India and subsequently to many other countries of the world.
Mother Teresa's family name is Agnes Gouxha Bojaxhiu. She was born in Skopje Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. She was one of three children born to a grocer and his wife, a family in poor circumstances. She attended the local schools and was greatly influenced by the Jesuit Missionaries of her district who had worked in far away India. At the age of 18 she decided to become a nun. She said, "When I was eighteen I decided to leave my home and become a nun, and since then I've never doubted that I have done the right thing. It was the will of God. It was His choice" (Spink.19).
She was sent to a convent in Ireland to learn English and from there to Darjeeling, India to teach in a convent -school for high school girls. She completed her novitiate, and took her first vows as a nun on March 24, 1931. She also received a new name, Teresa, after St. Therese of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun, patroness of missionaries.
Mother Teresa then went to Entally, Calcutta to teach in a high school for daughters of wealthy European and Indian families. She taught school there from 1931-1948, finishing her career in Entally as principal. The school was under the control of the Loreto Congregation of which Mother Teresa was a member. Mother Teresa was also in charge of the Daughters of St. Anne, a group of Indian nuns who worked with students of the local secondary school, an adjunct to the Catholic high school for girls. There also was a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin in Entally. Members of these groups and their students regularly visited patients of Nilratan Sarkar hospital. They also worked among the poor in the neighboring slum district of Motijhil.
On September 10, 1946 Mother Teresa who was principal of the Loreto Convents School in Calcutta was traveling by train to Darjeeling, India. While on the journey Mother Teresa received her second call to serve. These were days of great turmoil and unrest in India. India was on the verge of freedom from British rule. The Muslim League was clamoring for an independent country of Pakistan to be carved out of the west and east wings of undivided India. Mohamed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League had just called for and successfully executed "Direct Action Day" [started on August 16th, 1946]. With Jinnah's approval, the Moslems started violent action and riots against their Hindu neighbors and the civilian authorities to prove that Indians of different religions could not live together peacefully. These beliefs and actions contradicted what Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party were teaching.
Rioting and bloodshed continued until the Congress Party relented giving Mohammed Ali Jinnah Pakistan. It was if they had determined that it was better to have emergency surgery to remove the affected parts and thus save the main body of India. It was on one of those hectic days that Mother Teresa received the call from God as she herself described. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail it would have been to break the faith. It was God's will. This is what I want to do for God" (Spink.21). September 10, has since been known as "Inspiration Day" by the sisters of Missionaries of Charity.
She explained her call to live and work among the poor to the Archbishop of Calcutta, who supported her. She applied for permission to live outside the convent while still keeping her vows as a nun, known in the Catholic faith as exclaustration. She was permitted to do so on August 16, 1948. When leaving the protection of the Loreto convent, her stated purpose was "to -spend herself in the service of the poor and needy in the slums of Calcutta, and to gather around her some companions ready to undertake the same work" (Spink.22).
Thus Mother Teresa decided to live like and among the poor people of Calcutta. She wore a simple, cheap, white sari (Indian full flowing dress with a head cover) with a narrow blue border, a cross on her left shoulder and a pair of sandals on her feet. Mother Teresa further prepared herself for service by undertaking a nursing course under the tutelage of Mother Dengel of the Medical Missionary Hospital in Patna. Mother Dengel gave good advice to Mother Teresa. One piece of advice, which ran contrary to Mother Teresa's idea of poverty, was to feed the sisters well. Mother Dengel argued that good nutrition would keep the sisters strong and healthy for work, prevent malnutrition, tuberculosis and early death. Mother Teresa later wisely heeded this counsel, and often forced her novitiates to eat heartily.
In December 1948, with Indian citizenship papers in hand, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta, by then teeming with even more refugees from Pakistan. She rented a room in the slums of Motijhil for five rupees [about $1.00] a month and started a school for children using the mud floor as a blackboard and sticks as pointers. At first there were only a few students. As attendance grew, former students and colleagues came to help teach. Mother Teresa encouraged her pupils by giving them milk for food and bars of soap for hygiene. This was the humble start of the work of Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. Mother Teresa realized that she needed more than voluntary arid temporary help to carry on her work. She decided that the best thing to do was to start a new religious order of nuns who would dedicate themselves full time to serving the poor. Mother Teresa wrote the constitution for the new order. In addition to the three routine vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a fourth vow mandated free voluntary service to the poor.
Michael Gomes, an Indian Christian, gave Mother Teresa the use of the second story of his home (the Creek -Lane House) overlooking the Motijhil slums. On the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1949 Subhasini Das, a former student of Mother. Teresa's became Mother Teresa's first discipline. Subhasini Das took the name Agnes, Mother Teresa's first name. It is of interest to record that the first 10 women to join Mother Teresa were former students.
In 1949, three sisters worked with Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. By 1950 the number had grown to eight. On the feast of the Most Holy Rosary in October 1950, Mother Teresa was given permission to start a new congregation called the Missionary Sisters of Charity.
By 1952, the Creek Lane house was filled to capacity with 28 sisters in residence. The sisters followed a routine full of work, study and service to the poor. Their day began at 4:30 AM with time for prayers, devotions, mass and breakfast. By 8 AM the sisters were out in the slums teaching the children and caring for the sick, crippled and abandoned men, women and children. They also helped the orphans and widows, and in general, dispensed aid wherever needed. The sisters returned home for lunch and a short rest, then back to toil in the "bustees" (slum houses), until dinner time at 6 PM. After dinner, there was free time, rest, prayers, classes and instruction from Mother Teresa. After a long hard day, they finally retired.
Their great faith and unselfish love for others helped Mother Teresa and her sisters do the most menial tasks joyfully. Mother taught her nuns to serve everyone as if he or she were Jesus, and to work with joy and happiness in their hearts. It seemed that the poor and abandoned men, women and children whom the sisters of the Missionary of Charity served knew the complete sincerity and unconditional acceptance with which they were treated. Mother Teresa herself set the pace by declaring "the poor deserve not only service and dedication but also the joy that belongs to human love" (Spink.35).
Mother Teresa, looking for more space to house her growing congregation, finally bought a big house in the center of Calcutta. This home has served as the Mother House and center of operations. City Fathers of Calcutta - gave to Mother Teresa the unused dormitories attached to the Kalighat Hindu Temple. Calcutta hospitals did not have space to house the destitute dying, whose bodies were beyond medial salvation, and were often left to die in the streets. Mother Teresa's organization took people off the streets to afford them a decent death. As she said `What is a beautiful death? A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals, to die like angels--loved and wanted" (Spink.43). She called this home for the dying Nirmal Hirday place of the Immaculate Heart. The upper rooms of this facility also became a home for the growing number of novitiates.
The children of Calcutta had great needs. There were the unwed mothers, and their orphaned offspring; the crippled, abandoned, unwanted, beggars and retarded children as well as babies. In 1955, Mother Teresa started a home for the children which she called Sishu Bahavan. It was a two story dwelling located a few blocks from the Mother House. Children were cared for, fed, housed, clothed, taught and placed for adoption. Older children were sent to regular schools or taught a trade. Some were even married - married from the family of Mother Teresa and the sisters in the traditional custom of matchmaking.
The leprosy problem of India gained the attention of Mother Teresa and her nuns. The lepers were outcasts and the pariahs of society. They were ostracized. Some lepers committed suicide -in order to allow the unaffected members of their family to live within the society. Others could not stand the pain of separation causing entire families to live on the fringe of society, begging for a living and often existing off the city refuse. Dr. Sen, a leprosy specialist, offered his volunteer services to Mother Teresa. Using new Sulphur drugs, he successfully treated many of the patients.
In September, 1957 Mother Teresa started her mobile clinics for the treatment of lepers. She soon founded a leprosarium village outside Calcutta city limits consisting of a hospital, a convent, a chapel, thirty family homes, and a cottage industry school. She called it Shanti Nagar, "The Place of Peace." The leprosarium provided free medical treatment for the patients and also taught them useful trades, such as carpentry, shoe-making and cloth weaving etc. These skills helped the lepers make a useful living and restored their human dignity.
Many volunteers came to the assistance of Mother Teresa and her sisters in carrying forth their work. Thousands of volunteers including medical people, teachers, social workers, housewives and their families have contributed. Ann Blaikie, who had organized the co-workers when she lived in Calcutta, bas expanded the organization froth England, sending money and materials to the missionary sisters of Charity. Jacqueline de Decker organized the Link for the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, whose members spiritually adopt a missionary sister to lend support by prayers and communication. Father Georges Gorree coordinates the -link between the contemplative communities and the home bases from which the Missionary Sisters of Charity operate. His congregations send prayers and positive conscious thoughts to assist the sisters who are actively working with the needy of the world. Brother Andrew heads up the Missionary Brothers of Charity, a parallel organization to Mother Teresa's group. The brothers had fourteen houses in 1975 with a staff of one hundred-fifty volunteers. Thus Mother Teresa influenced thousands of people while helping the poor.
In 1960, after ten years in Calcutta, Mother- Teresa was allowed to expand her work for the poor and needy beyond the diocese of Calcutta. She went to the larger cities of India and opened charitable houses. When Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, attended a ceremony dedicating a home for the needy children in Delhi, Mother Teresa asked him "Sir, shall I tell you about our work?", to which the Prime Minister replied very simply, "No, Mother, you need not tell me about your work. I know about it. That is why I have come".
In 1965, Mother Teresa sent a group of her nuns to Venezuela to start the first minion outside of India. Peru, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Jordan, Yemen, England, U.S.A. and other countries soon invited her to send nuns to start their particular missionary work.
Mother Teresa and her sisters do not try to convert people to the Roman Catholic religion. They try to make people better in the religion to which they profess. The lives and actions of the Missionary Sisters of Charity reflect the love of God. They are holy, generous, and eager to make sacrifices, joyful, and submissive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Twenty-five years after the Pope approved the society of the Missionaries of Charity, there were one thousand, -one hundred and thirty-three sisters working in over eighty houses located all over the world.
Malcolm Muggeridge said of Mother Teresa, "I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ's gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. For this, all who have the inestimable privilege of knowing her, or knowing of her, must be eternally grateful" (Muggeridge.146).
And so she lived in Calcutta, working with the poor and supervising those who work for the poor. Though she looks frail and age has etched its mark on her face, she lives on, indomitable and full of love and devotion for the lowliest and most unfortunate of her children. When death finally takes her, her spirit will still live in Calcutta and in all the world where needy people look longingly for an angel of mercy to love and succor them in their suffering in this life; to love and succor them with a love that respects their dignity as human beings.
Mother Teresa died in 1997.
Works Cited
Mother Teresa's family name is Agnes Gouxha Bojaxhiu. She was born in Skopje Yugoslavia on August 27, 1910. She was one of three children born to a grocer and his wife, a family in poor circumstances. She attended the local schools and was greatly influenced by the Jesuit Missionaries of her district who had worked in far away India. At the age of 18 she decided to become a nun. She said, "When I was eighteen I decided to leave my home and become a nun, and since then I've never doubted that I have done the right thing. It was the will of God. It was His choice" (Spink.19).
She was sent to a convent in Ireland to learn English and from there to Darjeeling, India to teach in a convent -school for high school girls. She completed her novitiate, and took her first vows as a nun on March 24, 1931. She also received a new name, Teresa, after St. Therese of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun, patroness of missionaries.
Mother Teresa then went to Entally, Calcutta to teach in a high school for daughters of wealthy European and Indian families. She taught school there from 1931-1948, finishing her career in Entally as principal. The school was under the control of the Loreto Congregation of which Mother Teresa was a member. Mother Teresa was also in charge of the Daughters of St. Anne, a group of Indian nuns who worked with students of the local secondary school, an adjunct to the Catholic high school for girls. There also was a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin in Entally. Members of these groups and their students regularly visited patients of Nilratan Sarkar hospital. They also worked among the poor in the neighboring slum district of Motijhil.
On September 10, 1946 Mother Teresa who was principal of the Loreto Convents School in Calcutta was traveling by train to Darjeeling, India. While on the journey Mother Teresa received her second call to serve. These were days of great turmoil and unrest in India. India was on the verge of freedom from British rule. The Muslim League was clamoring for an independent country of Pakistan to be carved out of the west and east wings of undivided India. Mohamed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League had just called for and successfully executed "Direct Action Day" [started on August 16th, 1946]. With Jinnah's approval, the Moslems started violent action and riots against their Hindu neighbors and the civilian authorities to prove that Indians of different religions could not live together peacefully. These beliefs and actions contradicted what Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party were teaching.
Rioting and bloodshed continued until the Congress Party relented giving Mohammed Ali Jinnah Pakistan. It was if they had determined that it was better to have emergency surgery to remove the affected parts and thus save the main body of India. It was on one of those hectic days that Mother Teresa received the call from God as she herself described. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail it would have been to break the faith. It was God's will. This is what I want to do for God" (Spink.21). September 10, has since been known as "Inspiration Day" by the sisters of Missionaries of Charity.
She explained her call to live and work among the poor to the Archbishop of Calcutta, who supported her. She applied for permission to live outside the convent while still keeping her vows as a nun, known in the Catholic faith as exclaustration. She was permitted to do so on August 16, 1948. When leaving the protection of the Loreto convent, her stated purpose was "to -spend herself in the service of the poor and needy in the slums of Calcutta, and to gather around her some companions ready to undertake the same work" (Spink.22).
Thus Mother Teresa decided to live like and among the poor people of Calcutta. She wore a simple, cheap, white sari (Indian full flowing dress with a head cover) with a narrow blue border, a cross on her left shoulder and a pair of sandals on her feet. Mother Teresa further prepared herself for service by undertaking a nursing course under the tutelage of Mother Dengel of the Medical Missionary Hospital in Patna. Mother Dengel gave good advice to Mother Teresa. One piece of advice, which ran contrary to Mother Teresa's idea of poverty, was to feed the sisters well. Mother Dengel argued that good nutrition would keep the sisters strong and healthy for work, prevent malnutrition, tuberculosis and early death. Mother Teresa later wisely heeded this counsel, and often forced her novitiates to eat heartily.
In December 1948, with Indian citizenship papers in hand, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta, by then teeming with even more refugees from Pakistan. She rented a room in the slums of Motijhil for five rupees [about $1.00] a month and started a school for children using the mud floor as a blackboard and sticks as pointers. At first there were only a few students. As attendance grew, former students and colleagues came to help teach. Mother Teresa encouraged her pupils by giving them milk for food and bars of soap for hygiene. This was the humble start of the work of Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. Mother Teresa realized that she needed more than voluntary arid temporary help to carry on her work. She decided that the best thing to do was to start a new religious order of nuns who would dedicate themselves full time to serving the poor. Mother Teresa wrote the constitution for the new order. In addition to the three routine vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a fourth vow mandated free voluntary service to the poor.
Michael Gomes, an Indian Christian, gave Mother Teresa the use of the second story of his home (the Creek -Lane House) overlooking the Motijhil slums. On the feast of St. Joseph, March 19, 1949 Subhasini Das, a former student of Mother. Teresa's became Mother Teresa's first discipline. Subhasini Das took the name Agnes, Mother Teresa's first name. It is of interest to record that the first 10 women to join Mother Teresa were former students.
In 1949, three sisters worked with Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. By 1950 the number had grown to eight. On the feast of the Most Holy Rosary in October 1950, Mother Teresa was given permission to start a new congregation called the Missionary Sisters of Charity.
By 1952, the Creek Lane house was filled to capacity with 28 sisters in residence. The sisters followed a routine full of work, study and service to the poor. Their day began at 4:30 AM with time for prayers, devotions, mass and breakfast. By 8 AM the sisters were out in the slums teaching the children and caring for the sick, crippled and abandoned men, women and children. They also helped the orphans and widows, and in general, dispensed aid wherever needed. The sisters returned home for lunch and a short rest, then back to toil in the "bustees" (slum houses), until dinner time at 6 PM. After dinner, there was free time, rest, prayers, classes and instruction from Mother Teresa. After a long hard day, they finally retired.
Their great faith and unselfish love for others helped Mother Teresa and her sisters do the most menial tasks joyfully. Mother taught her nuns to serve everyone as if he or she were Jesus, and to work with joy and happiness in their hearts. It seemed that the poor and abandoned men, women and children whom the sisters of the Missionary of Charity served knew the complete sincerity and unconditional acceptance with which they were treated. Mother Teresa herself set the pace by declaring "the poor deserve not only service and dedication but also the joy that belongs to human love" (Spink.35).
Mother Teresa, looking for more space to house her growing congregation, finally bought a big house in the center of Calcutta. This home has served as the Mother House and center of operations. City Fathers of Calcutta - gave to Mother Teresa the unused dormitories attached to the Kalighat Hindu Temple. Calcutta hospitals did not have space to house the destitute dying, whose bodies were beyond medial salvation, and were often left to die in the streets. Mother Teresa's organization took people off the streets to afford them a decent death. As she said `What is a beautiful death? A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals, to die like angels--loved and wanted" (Spink.43). She called this home for the dying Nirmal Hirday place of the Immaculate Heart. The upper rooms of this facility also became a home for the growing number of novitiates.
The children of Calcutta had great needs. There were the unwed mothers, and their orphaned offspring; the crippled, abandoned, unwanted, beggars and retarded children as well as babies. In 1955, Mother Teresa started a home for the children which she called Sishu Bahavan. It was a two story dwelling located a few blocks from the Mother House. Children were cared for, fed, housed, clothed, taught and placed for adoption. Older children were sent to regular schools or taught a trade. Some were even married - married from the family of Mother Teresa and the sisters in the traditional custom of matchmaking.
The leprosy problem of India gained the attention of Mother Teresa and her nuns. The lepers were outcasts and the pariahs of society. They were ostracized. Some lepers committed suicide -in order to allow the unaffected members of their family to live within the society. Others could not stand the pain of separation causing entire families to live on the fringe of society, begging for a living and often existing off the city refuse. Dr. Sen, a leprosy specialist, offered his volunteer services to Mother Teresa. Using new Sulphur drugs, he successfully treated many of the patients.
In September, 1957 Mother Teresa started her mobile clinics for the treatment of lepers. She soon founded a leprosarium village outside Calcutta city limits consisting of a hospital, a convent, a chapel, thirty family homes, and a cottage industry school. She called it Shanti Nagar, "The Place of Peace." The leprosarium provided free medical treatment for the patients and also taught them useful trades, such as carpentry, shoe-making and cloth weaving etc. These skills helped the lepers make a useful living and restored their human dignity.
Many volunteers came to the assistance of Mother Teresa and her sisters in carrying forth their work. Thousands of volunteers including medical people, teachers, social workers, housewives and their families have contributed. Ann Blaikie, who had organized the co-workers when she lived in Calcutta, bas expanded the organization froth England, sending money and materials to the missionary sisters of Charity. Jacqueline de Decker organized the Link for the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, whose members spiritually adopt a missionary sister to lend support by prayers and communication. Father Georges Gorree coordinates the -link between the contemplative communities and the home bases from which the Missionary Sisters of Charity operate. His congregations send prayers and positive conscious thoughts to assist the sisters who are actively working with the needy of the world. Brother Andrew heads up the Missionary Brothers of Charity, a parallel organization to Mother Teresa's group. The brothers had fourteen houses in 1975 with a staff of one hundred-fifty volunteers. Thus Mother Teresa influenced thousands of people while helping the poor.
In 1960, after ten years in Calcutta, Mother- Teresa was allowed to expand her work for the poor and needy beyond the diocese of Calcutta. She went to the larger cities of India and opened charitable houses. When Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, attended a ceremony dedicating a home for the needy children in Delhi, Mother Teresa asked him "Sir, shall I tell you about our work?", to which the Prime Minister replied very simply, "No, Mother, you need not tell me about your work. I know about it. That is why I have come".
In 1965, Mother Teresa sent a group of her nuns to Venezuela to start the first minion outside of India. Peru, Australia, Italy, Brazil, Jordan, Yemen, England, U.S.A. and other countries soon invited her to send nuns to start their particular missionary work.
Mother Teresa and her sisters do not try to convert people to the Roman Catholic religion. They try to make people better in the religion to which they profess. The lives and actions of the Missionary Sisters of Charity reflect the love of God. They are holy, generous, and eager to make sacrifices, joyful, and submissive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Twenty-five years after the Pope approved the society of the Missionaries of Charity, there were one thousand, -one hundred and thirty-three sisters working in over eighty houses located all over the world.
Malcolm Muggeridge said of Mother Teresa, "I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ's gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. For this, all who have the inestimable privilege of knowing her, or knowing of her, must be eternally grateful" (Muggeridge.146).
And so she lived in Calcutta, working with the poor and supervising those who work for the poor. Though she looks frail and age has etched its mark on her face, she lives on, indomitable and full of love and devotion for the lowliest and most unfortunate of her children. When death finally takes her, her spirit will still live in Calcutta and in all the world where needy people look longingly for an angel of mercy to love and succor them in their suffering in this life; to love and succor them with a love that respects their dignity as human beings.
Mother Teresa died in 1997.
Works Cited
- Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
- Spink, Kathryn. The Miracle of Love. New York: Harper and Row, 1981