But Mother Teresa of Calcutta had no trouble reaching her audiences at Mt. St Joseph College and at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains last week as she spoke of the work of her community of Sisters among the poor and abandoned of the world and emphasized that “they are our brothers and sisters, created by the same loving hand of the Father”.
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Mother Teresa was born to ethnic Albanian parents on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia, and named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu.
She was so small, she stood on a box to reach the microphone.
During her life, Teresa was widely revered as a self-sacrificing force for good, despite ferocious criticism from prominent intellectuals including the British writer Christopher Hitchens and the Australian feminist academic Germaine Greer. She learnt English to go there and soon discovered in prayer and personal contact while in Bengal that her mission would mean leaving her congregation and launching out on her own. Her life is a great lesson for Indians to rise above narrow social and religious divisions and work for the upliftment of the poor and those on the fringes of society.
One year earlier, Hillary had urged her husband Bill on the very first day of his presidency to sign five executive orders authorizing federal funding for abortion, galvanizing the US government’s sordid partnership with Planned Parenthood. “Intentionally or not, I feel that she robbed Calcutta of a certain part of its identity”.
Her reputation has also suffered as the focus of Western aid work has moved away from immediate relief to development programs created to deliver sustainable improvements in living standards: The model of teaching people to fish rather than feeding them fish. A humble building in the slums of the sprawling city, the home she founded in 1950 – called Nirmal Hriday (Sacred Heart) – housed 86 men and women dying from cancer, tuberculosis and neglect, but now dying also with dignity and with love. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
“As the nation was celebrating the Bi-centennial, Mother Teresa arrived in Philadelphia for the 41st Eucharist Congress”. Harold recently observed. “The power of Mother Teresa was found in her enormous service and commitment to the poor”. “She is an example of the difference one person can make through simple acts of love and concern for those in need”. She’s a mystic on the streets, bringing people to hospice, treating them, caring for them.
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In March 1997 Sister Nirmala, a former Hindu who converted to Roman Catholicism, succeeded Mother Teresa as leader of the Missionaries of Charity. But today we have this odd idea that these two things-a deep life of prayer in the presence of God and social justice-are somehow opposed, but in the tradition they are not, and in Mother Teresa they are not. Also that she continued to witness in that manner amidst her experience of God receding from her, that there are many times that she did not experience God, experienced God as absent, and continued to move forward in obedience to God in the midst of that.
