Mother Teresa.
Words seem inadequate when the person in question is Mother Teresa. Her’s is a story of selfless devotion and determination, a hard-pressed mission to help the
poor and needy, indeed she is
saint in every sense of the word. Born on August 27, 1910 as Agnes Gonzha Bojanhia to Albanian parents in Skopje, Yugoslavia. Mother Teresa showed compassion towards the lesser fortunate from a very young age.
At the age of twelve, relasation dawned on her that she had a duty to perform for the downtrodden. Even before this one of her teachers predicted that she would become a saint. And six years later, she joined the
Sisters of Loreto, an Irish order which send her to India in 1928 as a teacher.
Calcutta charmed her, for it was a city bursting at its seams. The prevailing poverty and plight of the slum dwellers in the “city of Joy” inspired her to spread God’s Love. She acquired Indian citizenship in 1948. It was on train to the hill retreat of Darjeeling in 1946 that she heard the second call to “serve him among the poorest of the poor”. And one fine day, with just five rupees in hand she quietly walked out of the school and nunnery, into the streets, to face the problems of human sufferings.
Of course, her boundless acts of kindness were not without struggles and difficulties. The very first of her institutionsd-Nirmal Hriday which which opened in an abandoned dharmashala near the famous Kali temple, evoked strong from Brahmin persists.
“Blesses are the poor, for they can see God”, declared Jesus Christ. Mother not only wanted the serve the poor but also desired to be poor. She firmly believed that those who rely on God and place their entire trust in God are poor. Mother daily looked up to God and accepted his fatherly care. Filled with God’s own love through her deep and intimate relationship with him. She was able to share the same unadulterated love with human beings.
Not that her services went unnoticed India’s highest civilian
award, the Bharat Ratna, was conferred on her in 1980, which was followed by the Ramon Magsasy award and the Padmashree. In 1979 she received the Kennedy International Award and Pope John
Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize gave the Jawaharlal Nehru international peace prize to her in 1972 to be followed by the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979-the first awarded to an Indian citizen. The first Rajiv Gandhi National Sadhbahvana award was conferred on her in 1993.
It’s true that the same figure in the blue-bordered white sari by name of Mother Teresa is no longer with us but then there are also a of sisters over the world who are following in her footsteps.
And the lives of these sisters would continue to be a voice like the mother-voice of protest and compassion. Like mother, her band of sisters will teach the world through their lives how to overcome evil by good, how to replace egoism by sowing seeds of justice.
A religious person is interreligious and in a multi-religious society like ours, Mother was truly a gift of God. Her work means work for the poor, the rejected and dying . we must follow her example and reach out to the poor and those suffering, only then are we worthy of paying homage to her, the living saint.
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