“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje of Macedonia, just North of Greece. She was the youngest of 3 children born to Grocers. When she was 9, her father died and by the age of 12, she had a calling to help the poor.
Throughout her teens, she was inspired by reports of work being done in India by Jesuit missionaries. At 18, she left home to join a community of Irish nuns, the Sisters of Loretto, who had a mission in Calcutta. After receiving training in Dublin, Ireland and Darjeeling, India, she departed for Calcutta. She took her religious vows and received the name Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Therese of Lisieux.
Her 1st assignment was to teach and then serve as principal in a girl’s high school. Although it was close to the poor section, the students were mostly wealthy. She experienced a 2nd vocation to leave the convent life and work directly with the poor, of which the Vatican gave permission. She started new work under the guidance of the Archbishop.
In preparation, she took intensive med training and then gathered unschooled children from the slums to begin teaching. She quickly attracted both financial support and volunteers.
She started each day with communion, then went out, rosary in hand, to find and serve God amongst “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.” After some months, she was joined by her former students.
Her new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, was officially established in 1950. By the early 1960s, she began sending her Sisters to other parts of India. A Decree of Praise from the Pope encouraged her to open a house in Venezuela, followed by Rome and Tanzania, and eventually spreading to every continent. Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, she opened houses in almost all of the communist countries including the Soviet Union, Albania and Cuba.
She had also founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, the contemplative branch of the Sisters, the Contemplative Brothers and the Missionaries of Charity Fathers.
By the time of her death in 1997, her Sisters numbered 4,000 members in 610 foundations and in 123 countries around the world.
Not until after her death was it revealed that during her life, she experienced a deep, painful abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever increasing longing for His love which she called, “the darkness”. She was canonized in 2016 in a ceremony that included 1500 homeless.
“We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great Love.”
She is the patron saint of World Youth Day and the poor.
Her feast day is September 5.
For God’s Glory.
