A Biography of Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia; she was the youngest of three children. Mother Teresa is Albanian by birth; her original name is Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. In 1948, Mother Teresa became a citizen of India. At the age of 18, Mother Teresa attended the religious Order called Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland. She received her spiritual training in Dublin, Ireland and Darjeeling, India. In 1931, Mother Teresa took the name of Teresa from the French nun Martin, who was canonized in 1927 with the title St. Therese of Lisieux. In 1937, Mother Teresa took her vows. She taught for 20 years in Saint Mary's High School in Calcutta, India. In September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa received another call from God to serve the poorest of the poor who live in the streets.
In 1948, Pope Pious XII granted Mother Teresa permission to leave her duties as an independent nun, and she began to share her life with the poor, the sick and the hungry of Calcutta. Mother Teresa established a congregation called Missionaries of Charity. Her initial work consisted of teaching the children of the streets how to read. In 1950, Mother Teresa began to care for lepers. In 1965, Pope Paul VI put the Missionaries of Charity under the control of the Papacy and gave authorization to Mother Teresa to expand her Order to other countries.
Centers have opened almost everywhere around the world to assist lepers, the elderly, the blind, and people living with AIDS. Mother Teresa also opened schools and homes for the poor and abandoned children. Her devotion was The Rosary, her inseparable liaison with Jesus. Mother Teresa was hospitalized three times in 1996 for heart problems. This Time she wants to step down.
Better to respond to the physical and spiritual necessities of the poor men, Mother Teresa founded the Brothers Missionaries of the Charity on 1963, in 1976 the contemplative branch of the Sisters, in 1979 the Contemplatives Brothers and 1984 the Parents Missionaries of the Charity. Nevertheless, its inspiration not limit only to which they felt the vocation to the religious life. It created the Collaborators of Mother Teresa and the Collaborators Ill and Suffers, people of different beliefs and nationalities with which it shared his spirit of oration, simplicity, sacrifice and its apostolate based on humble works of love. This spirit inspired later to the Lay Missionaries of the Charity. In answer to requests of many priests, Mother Teresa also initiated in 1981 the Sacerdotal Movement Corpus Christi for those priests who wished to share their charisma and spirit.
During these years of fast development, the world began to pay attention to Mother Teresa and the work that she had initiated. Numerous prizes, beginning by the Indian Prize Padmashri in 1962 and of much more well-known way the Nobel Prize of La Paz in 1979, did honors to their work. At the same time, the mass media began to follow their activities with an interest every greater time. It received, as much the prizes as the increasing attention to the Glory of God and in name of the poor men.
All the life and the work of Mother Teresa were a testimony of the joy to love, the greatness and the dignity of each human person, of the value of the small things made with fidelity and love, and of the incomparable value of the friendship with God. But, another heroic side of this woman existed who came to the single light after her death. It hides to all the glances, it even hides nearest her, her inner life it was marked by the deep experience of, a painful and constant feeling of separation of God, to even feel rejected by Him, was united to a desire every greater time of her love. She called herself darkness to its inner experience. The pain night of her soul, that began more or less when it gave beginning to her work with the poor men and continued until the end of her life, lead to Mother Teresa to a always deeper union with God. By means of the dark, she participated in the thirst of Jesus (the painful and ardent desire of love of Jesus) and shared the inner desolation of the poor men.
During the last years of her life, in spite of more and more the serious problems of health, Mother Teresa continued directing her Institute and responding to the necessities of the poor men and the Church. In 1997 the Sisters of Mother Teresa counted almost on 4,000 members and they had settled down in 610 foundations in 123 countries of the world. In March of 1997, Mother Teresa successively blessed to his her just chosen successor like General Superior of the Missionaries of the Charity, carrying out a new trip to the foreigner. After being for the last time with the Pope Juan Pablo II, she returned to Calcutta where she passed the last weeks of his life receiving to the people who went to visit it and instructing her Sisters.
The 5 of September, the earth life of Mother Teresa arrived at her aim. The Government of India granted the honor to celebrate a funeral to her of state and her body was buried in the House Mother of the Missionaries of the Charity. Her tomb quickly became a place of peregrination and oration for people of faith and diverse social extraction (rich and poor indifferently). Mother Teresa left the example us of a solid faith, an invincible hope and an extraordinary charity.
Less than two years after her death, because of extended of the fame of sanctity of Mother the Teresa and of the favors that were attributed to him, the Pope Juan Pablo II allowed the opening of her Cause of Canonization. The 20 of December of the 2002 same Pope approved decrees on the heroically of the virtues and the miracle obtained by intercession of Mother Teresa.
On March 13, 1997, Sister Nirmala is elected to succeed Mother Teresa.
In my opinion Mother Teresa deserves a special place in this huge world; she deserves a real thankful demonstration from all of us because her vocation is a message of love. Her work demonstrates that a true conviction is always accompanied by action and that love in action is service. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 over her own objections, but she accepted it on behalf of the "poorest of the poor".
