Mother Teresar’s Legacy

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. This quote was spoken by the renowned Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic Nun and a Missionary. She dedicated her life to helping the ill and poverty-stricken. She spent multiple years in India where she established the Missionaries of Charity, a religious fellowship to serving the ones in a significant amount of need. In 1979, Mother Teresa was granted with the Nobel Peace Prize. Nineteen years after her death, the Roman Catholic Church canonised her as Saint Teresa. Today, Mother Teresar's legacy still continues to live.

CHILDHOOD

Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born on the day of August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia (FYROM). On the day after her birth, she was baptized and deemed that day as her True Birthday. Also at the age of five she underwent her first communion. She was the child of Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu and the younger sister to Aga and Lazar Bojaxhiu. Agnes father was an entrepreneur and had the ability to provide his dearest with every essential. He was also exceptionally involved in politics. Her mother was a vital participant in community church pursuits. Together they were both grocers. The family possessed a good standing and had the capability to afford two residences. Around the age of eight, a tragic death left her and her family shook. Agnes father was dead. The cause of his death is still undisclosed but speculations say that political enemies may have poisoned him. Since Dranafile knew she was now the contributor for the family, she started a textile business to provide for her family. In the aftermath of her father's death, Agnes became extraordinarily close to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a deep commitment to charity. (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) Her mother had a great influence on Agnes life and inspired her to do things. Though they were not wealthy, Drana invited the town to have dinner with her and her family. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she counseled her daughter. When Agnes asked who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded, "Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people." (Mother Teresa Biography) Also as a child, Agnes sung in the local choir and frequently was asked to sing alone. At age twelve she felt a religious, spiritual, and helping calling.

RELIGIOUS CALLING

When she reached eighteen, she left her family, never to see them again, to become a missionary nun in the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the Loreto Sisters). (Chidiac 470) This took place in Dublin, Ireland around the year 1929. Here she acquired the name of Sister Mary Teresa. She chose the name Teresa because her favorite saint was Saint Teresa of Lisieux, a patron saint of missionaries. (Libby Laux) Sister Teresa commenced her evangelist efforts in Darjeeling, India where she instructed affluent children at the St. Teresar's school. Nearly two years later, in 1931, she got sent to Calcutta to educate children on geography at St. Mary's High School. This school was for all girls and it was run by the Sisters of Loreto. Most girls there were from middle-class families, unlike St. Teresar's in Darjeeling, India. St. Maryr's was near maybe the most horrible part of Calcutta, known as Moti Jhil. Moti Jhil was a horrible town that was greatly populated with penniless and starving people, unbolted sewers, and diseases. Throughout Sister Teresa's time at St. Mary's, she was affected by how poverty was neighboring this great school and instructional environment. She frequently went to the hovels on Saturdays to assist and lend a helping hand to the poverty-stricken people of Moti Jhil. Six years later, on May 24, 1937, she took her Final Profession of Vows and with that acquired the name, which the world recognizes her with today, Mother Teresa. (Who is Mother Teresa?) She stayed at St. Maryr's as a teacher, and in the year of 1944 she grew into the schoolr's principal. Though Mother Teresa loved St. Maryr's and just loved the children there, she equally enjoyed helping those in need and felt she had a calling there.

A NEW CALLING

September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa was riding a train from Calcutta to the Himalayan Foothills for a retreat. It was then when she says Christ spoke upon her told her to leave St. Maryr's and form a new religious community and go to the aid of the needy in Calcutta. She could not deny the mission for that would be breaking faith, but leaving the Sisters of Loreto convent without consent would be unfeasible for the reason as to which she took a vow of obedience. In January of 1948, she was granted permission to seek this new vocation. On August 17, 1948, clad in a white blue-bordered saree, Mother Teresa walked past the gate of the convent, which had been her habitat for almost two decades, to enter the world of poor, a world that needed her, a world which He wanted her to serve, a world she knew of as her own! (Who is Mother Teresa?) Soon after, Mother Teresa did six months of fundamental medical instruction and then returned to Calcutta. She turned her calling into actual work and actions.

On December 21, 1948, the first thing she decided to do help the people in the hovels. Only thing Mother Teresa wanted to do was help and aid and she felt that was her obligation. In the beginning she was alone but volunteers began to join and help her achieve this mission Christ has given her. Shortly after, she commenced an open-air school and initated a home for the moribund and poor in a tumbledown building. Because of this, she persuaded the government to contribute money to her. On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa was granted consent from the Vatican to begin a new congregation which in the course of time became the Missionaries of Charity. It started off with only 13 members but it went on to develop into one of the most notable and acknowledged congregations world-wide.

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