Answering a Call Within a Call
Answering a Call Within a Call
L'Osservatore Romano
“By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus”.
Small in stature, rocklike in faith, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. “God still loves the world and he sends you and me to be his love and his compassion to the poor”, she was fond of saying.
Her soul was filled with the light of Christ. Her heart burned with love for Jesus with one desire: “to quench his thirst for love and for souls”.
This wonderful messenger of God’s love was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, a city situated at the crossroads of Balkan history. The youngest of the children born to Nikola and Dranc Bojaxhiu, she was baptised Gonxha Agnes, received her First Communion at the age of 5 and was confirmed in November 1916.
From the day of her First Holy Communion, Gonxha Agnes was driven by a love for souls. Her father’s sudden death when she was about 8 years old left the family in financial straits. Her mother raised the children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s character and vocation. Gonxha’s religious formation was further assisted by the vibrant Jesuit parish of the Sacred Heart in which she was actively involved.
At age 18, moved by a desire to become a missionary, the young woman left her home in September 1928 to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Ireland. There she received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St Thérèse of Lisieux. She departed in December for India, arriving in Calcutta on 6 January 1929.
After making her first profession of vows in May 1931, Sr Teresa was assigned to the Loreto Entally community in Calcutta and taught at St Mary’s School for girls. On 24 May 1937, she made her final profession of vows, becoming, as she said, the “spouse of Jesus” for “all eternity”. From that time on she was called Mother Teresa.
She continued teaching at St Mary’s and in 1944 became the school’s principal. A woman of profound prayer and deep love for her religious Sisters and her students, Mother Teresa’s 20 years in Loreto were filled with profound happiness. Noted for her charity, selflessness and courage, her capacity for hard work and a natural talent for organization, she lived out her consecration to Jesus in the midst of her companions with fidelity and joy.
On 10 September 1946, while travelling by train from Calcutta to Daijeeling for her annual retreat, Mother Teresa received her “inspiration”, what she would later describe as a “call within a call”. On that day, in a way she could never fully explain, Jesus’ thirst for love and for souls took hold of her heart, and the desire to satisfy his thirst became the driving force of her life.
Over the course of the next weeks and months, by means of interior locutions and visions, Jesus revealed to her the desire of his heart for “victims of love” who would “radiate his love” on souls. “Come be my light”, the Lord begged her. “I cannot go alone”.
He revealed his pain at the neglect of the poor, his sorrow at their ignorance of him and his longing for their love. He asked Mother Teresa to establish a religious community dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor.
Nearly two years of testing and discernment passed before Mother Teresa received permission to begin. On 17 August 1948, she dressed for the first time in a white, blue-bordered sari and passed through the gates of her beloved Loreto convent to enter the world of the poor.
After a short course with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta and found temporary lodging with the Little Sisters of the Poor. On 21 December she went for the first time to the slums. She visited families, washed the sores of children, cared for an old man lying sick on the road and nursed a woman dying of hunger and tuberculosis.
She started each day in communion with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and then went out, rosary in hand, to find and serve the Lord in “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for. After some months, she was joined, one by one, by her former students”.
On 7 October 1950, the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was officially established in the Archdiocese of Calcutta.
By the early 1960s, Mother Teresa had begun to send her Sisters to other parts of India. The Decree of Praise granted to the Congregation by Pope Paul VI in February 1965 encouraged her to open a house in Venezuela. It was soon followed by foundations in Rome and Tanzania and, eventually, on every continent.
Starting in 1980 and continuing through the 1990s, Mother Teresa opened houses in almost all of the Communist countries.
In order to respond better to both the physical and spiritual needs of the poor, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963, the contemplative branch of the Sisters in 1976, the Contemplative Brothers in 1979, and the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984.
Her inspiration, however, was not limited to those with religious vocations.
She formed the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa and the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, people of many faiths and nationalities with whom she shared her spirit of prayer, simplicity, sacrifice, and her apostolate of humble works of love. This spirit later inspired the Lay Missionaries of Charity.
In response to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests as a “little way of holiness” for those who desired to share in her charism and spirit.
During the years of rapid growth of the Community, the world began to turn its eyes towards Mother Teresa and the work she had started. Numerous awards, beginning with the Indian Padmashri Award in 1962 and most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, honoured her work, while an increasingly interested media began to follow her activities. She always accepted both awards and attention “for the glory of God and in the name of the poor”.
The whole of Mother Teresa’s life and labour bore witness to the joy of loving, the greatness and dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully and with love, and the unparalleled worth of friendship with God. But there was another heroic side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death.
Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life marked by an. experience of a deep, painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by him, along with an ever increasing longing for his love. She called her inner experience, “the darkness”.
The “painful night” of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever deeper union with God. Through the darkness she mystically participated in Jesus’ thirst, in his painful and burning longing for love, and she shared in the interior desolation of the poor.
During the last years of her life, despite increasingly severe health problems, Mother Teresa continued to govern her Society and respond to the needs of the poor and the Church. By 1997, Mother Teresa’s Sisters numbered nearly 4,000 mem- bers and were established in 610 foundations in 123 countries around the world.
In March 1997, she blessed Sr Nirmala Joshi, her newly-elected successor, as Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity and then made one last trip abroad. After meeting with Pope John Paul II for the last time, she returned to Calcutta and spent her final weeks receiving visitors and instructing her Sisters.
On 5 September 1997, at age 87, Mother Teresa’s earthly life came to an end. She was given the honour of' a state funeral by the Government of India and her body was buried at the Motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity. Her tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for people of all faiths, rich and poor alike.
Mother Teresa left a testament of unshakable faith, invincible hope and extraordinary charity. Her response to Jesus’ plea, “Come be my light”, made her a Missionary of Charity, a “mother to the poor”, a symbol of compassion to the world and a living witness to the thirsting love of God.
Less than two years after her death, in view of Mother Teresa’s widespread reputation of holiness and the favours being reported, Pope John Paul II permitted the opening of her Cause of Canonization. On 20 December 2002, the Holy Father approved the decrees of her heroic virtues and miracles, and beatified her on 19 October 2003 in St Peter’s Square.
On 17 December 2015, Pope Francis recognized a second miracle attributable to Mother Teresa — involving the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours — thus leading to her canonization exactly one day before the 19th anniversary of her death.
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
9 September 2016, page 5
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