The Legend

Mother Teresa was born Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Serbia, on August 26, 1910. She was the youngest of five children born to an Albanian couple, Nikola and Dronda Bojaxhiu. Though her elder brother Laza said they were well-off as a family, two of their siblings died. And Nikola their father was killed, probably due to poisoning because of his political activities. So during her childhood, Gonxha’s family did it hard.

From an early age Gonxha was very involved in church – and was fascinated by stories of missionaries. At the age of twelve she sensed the call of God. And at the age of eighteen she decided to be a missionary. She traveled to Dublin to train with the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish order who sent missionaries in India. There she learnt the spiritual disciplines that she maintained – and which sustained her – throughout her life.

In 1929 Gonxha was sent to Darjeeling to join the Sisters of Loreto in India. And in 1931, when she took her vows, Gonxha took the name ‘Teresa’ in honour of Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux whom she admired for their devotion and dedication. ‘Sister Teresa’ was sent to teach at St. Mary’s High School in Kolkata,

Teresa said she enjoyed teaching at St. Mary’s, but became increasingly concerned about the plight of the poor whom she saw outside the walls of the convent where she was providing education to the rich. In 1946 she took time out in Darjeeling to try to figure out what she should do about her growing awareness of a call to ‘give up Loreto where I was happy and go out to the streets… to serve Christ among the poorest of the poor’[1] She decided to go to Patna to get some basic training in nursing while she negotiated permission to leave the convent. In 1948 she was given permission to work on the streets, so Teresa set aside her habit, put on a simple white and blue cotton sari and started teaching kids in the slums.

Right from the beginning Teresa was faced with the complexity of working with the poor. There was no equipment and no budget for equipment. She had to teach them to write in the dirt. Often the kids would get sick, so she had to teach them lessons in basic health and hygiene – and beg for medicines they needed their parents could not afford to buy. As she met their needs, more and more people came to her for help. And soon she was overwhelmed by a ‘never-ending stream of human needs’[2]

However, the story of what Teresa was doing spread, and many young women – inspired by her example –  came to help her. In 1950 ‘Mother Teresa’ invited her ‘daughters’ to join her in forming an order called ‘The Missionaries of Charity’ which would be dedicated to caring for those nobody cared for.

Since then the work of the Missionaries of Charity has spread all over the world. ‘They provide help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America – even in the former Soviet Union and Eastern European – and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers. The Missionaries of Charity are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association in 1969. And by the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa’s charism in their families.’[3]

In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in global recognition of her work. On September 5 1997 she died.

The Person

Mother Teresa died in the same week as Princess Diana. At the time they died these two women were the most famous women in the world. Mother Teresa and Princess Diana were friends and Princess Diana was buried with a rosary that Mother Teresa had given her. But in spite of Princess Diana’s occasional, well- publicized acts of charity, the two women could not have been more different from one another. Princess Diana was the face of luxury and indulgence. Mother Teresa was the face of poverty and compassion.

For those who aspire to be rich, Princess Diana was an icon. But for many of us who aspire to work with the poor with dignity and integrity and grace, Mother Teresa was perhaps our greatest inspiration. As  Malcolm Muggeridge – who was converted through his encounter with Mother Teresa – once said ‘For me, Mother Teresa of Calcutta embodies Christian love in action. Her face shines with the love of Christ.’ [4]

However, after she died, in correspondence with her confidants, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuck, a senior member of the Missionaries of Charity, Teresa confessed that her famous Christ smile – ‘Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive’ – was often ‘a mask’ for her, ‘a cloak that covers everything’ [5] – ‘the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness so great that nothing touches my soul.’[6]

It would seem that once Teresa embraced the pain of the abandonment of the poor, she was never ever free from the ‘loneliness’ and the ‘torture’ of a sense of abandonment her self. The letters reveal that ‘for nearly half a century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever neither in her heart or in the eucharist.’ [7]

The discrepancy between her outward expression of overflowing love and her inward experience of total spiritual dryness was something she was acutely aware of. On one occasion Teresa told an advisor: ‘I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God. If you had been there you would have said “What hypocrisy!” ’[8]

Cynics like Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing criticism of Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great, says these statements show Teresa ‘was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person!’ [9] But I would say  these statements reflect the contradictions that face anyone who chooses to follow the way of Christ.

Because he identified with the poor and confronted the rich, Christ was crucified by the establishment. And when he was crucified, he felt totally abandoned by God. ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’[10] Following the way of Christ, Paul said: ‘We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you’[11] And Teresa understood this when she said gladly but sadly: ‘Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.’[12]

Those of us who would take Mother Teresa as an example of how we can work with people who are abandoned, need to not only learn to do God’s will with a smile like she did, but also learn to do so while we are crying inside as we deal with the inevitable, unavoidable sense of abandonment we feel ourselves.