MOTHER TERESA (அன்னை தெரேசா)

Mother Teresa:

Mother Teresa was born in 1919 in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. Little is known about her early life, but at a young age, she felt a calling to be a nun and serve through helping the poor. At the age of 18, she was given permission to join a group of nuns in Ireland. After a few months of training, with the Sisters of Loreto, she was then given permission to travel to India. She took her formal religious vows in 1931 and chose to be named after St.Therese of Lisieux – the patron saint of missionaries.

On her arrival in India, she began by working as a teacher; however, the widespread poverty of Calcutta made a deep impression on her, and this led to her starting a new order called “ The Missionaries of Charity”. the primary objective of this mission  was to look after people, who nobody else was prepaid to look after. Mother Teresa felt that serving other was a fundamental principle of the teaching of Jesus Christ. she often mentioned the saying of Jesus,

Calling of Serving Humanity:

Although Mother loved teaching and enjoyed shaping young minds at St. Mary’s she was immensely disturbed by the plight of people around her. The Hindu-Muslim riots of 1946 prior to partition of India tore the nation apart. These two traumatic events drove Mother Teresa to contemplate what she could do to alleviate the sufferings of the people around her.

On 10 September, 1946, while travelling to Darjeeling North-Bengal,for the annual retreat of the convent, Mother heard “the call within call”. She felt as if the Jesus was asking her to come out of the walls and serve the down-trodden of the society. following the Call, on August 17, 1947, Mother left the convent. Out of reverence towards the Indian culture she adopted white sari with a blue border. He applied for Indian Citizenship and took basic medical training from Holy Family Hospital in Patna. For the next few years, Mother Teresa livied among the poor, in the slums of Calcutta. She, along with a few fellow nuns, went door to door, begging for food and financial help. They survived on the bare minimum and used the excess to help people around them. Gradually, her tireless efforts were recognized and help started pouring in from various sources.

Missionaries of Charity:

Mother Teresa quickly translated her calling into concrete actions to help the city’s poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated buildings she convinced the city government to donate her cause. In October 1950, she won canocical recognition for a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only a handful of members- most of them former teacher or pupils from St. Mary’s School.

As the ranks of her congregation swelled and donations poured in from around India and across the globe, the scope of Mother Teresa’s charitable activities expamded exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.

in 1971, Mother Teresa travelled to New York City to open her first American-Based house of Charity,  and in the summer of 1982, she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she crossed Christian East Beirut and Muslim west Beirut to aid children of both Faiths. In 1985, Mother Teresa returned to New York and spoke at the 40^th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly. While there, She also opened Gift of Love, a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

Mother Teresa’s Award and Recognition:

In February 1965, Pope Paul VI bestowed the Decree of Praise upon the Missionaries of Charity, which prompted Mother Teresa to begin expanding internationally. By the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered more than 4,000- in addition to thousand more lay volunteers- with 610 foundations in 123 countries around the world.

Mother Teresa letter:

In2003, the publication of Mother Teresa’s private correspondence caused a wholesale re-evaluation of her life revealing the crisis of faith she suffered for most of the last 50 years of her life.

In one despairing letter to a confidant, she wrote, “Where is my Faith- even deep down right in there is nothing,but emptiness & darkness- My God-how painful is this umknown pain-I have no faith-I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd

In one despairing letter to a confidant, She wrote, “Where is my Faith-even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness- My God-how painful is this unknown pain- I have no faith- I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart- & make suffer untold agony”.  While such revelations are shocking considering her public image, they have also made Mother Teresa a more relatable and human figure to all those who experience doubt in their beliefs.

Death :

September 3, 1997 Mother Teresa, the Angel of Calcutta, dies at the age of 87, Mother Teresa, the Macedonian nun who dedicated her life to helping the poorest People of the Indian city of Calcutta and those in need across the world, died on this day in 1997.