St. Teresa of Calcutta

Born in 1910 in the city of Skopje, the woman the world would come to know as Mother Teresa was named Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. Her home was one of deep faith and hospitality; her mother, Drana, often invited the poor to share their meals, teaching her children that the hungry were their kin. This domestic church laid the foundation for a soul that would eventually hunger only for the salvation of others. Her father, Nikola, was a successful merchant whose sudden and mysterious death when Anjezë was only eight years old plunged the family into financial hardship but strengthened their spiritual bonds. At the age of eighteen, moved by reports of Jesuit missions in India, Anjezë left her family—never to see her mother or sister again—to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. She took the name Teresa, after St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower" who sought to do small things with great love. After a brief period in Dublin to learn English, she sailed for India, arriving in Calcutta in early 1929. For nearly twenty years, Sister Teresa lived a quiet, hidden life as a teacher and eventually headmistress at St. Mary’s School in Entally. She was beloved by her students, finding joy in the classroom while the poverty of the city hummed just outside the convent walls. During the Great Famine of 1943 and the civil unrest that preceded Indian independence, she witnessed firsthand the suffering of the masses, yet she remained bound by her cloistered vows until the Lord spoke to her heart. On September 10, 1946, while traveling by train to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Sister Teresa experienced what she termed a "call within a call." In an intimate encounter with the Lord, she perceived the "Thirst of Jesus" for souls and for the love of the very poorest. Christ asked her to leave the security of the Loreto cloister to live among the destitute, serving Him in the "distressing disguise" of the broken and the abandoned. This transition was not immediate; she required ecclesiastical permission to live as a consecrated woman outside the convent, a process that tested her patience and obedience. In 1948, she donned the simple white cotton sari with three blue stripes, symbolizing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, with the addition of a fourth vow: wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. She began her work alone in the slums of Motijhil, after receiving basic medical training from the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna. She taught children to read by writing in the dirt and tended to the sores of the sick with whatever meager supplies she could gather. Soon, former students joined her, forming the nucleus of the Missionaries of Charity, which received official diocesan approval in 1950. The work grew rapidly, encompassing the Kalighat Home for the Dying, where she transformed an abandoned temple into a sanctuary where the destitute could die in peace and dignity. Mother Teresa’s vision was simple yet profound: no one should die alone, and every human being, regardless of their condition, deserves to be treated with the dignity of a child of God. She became a sign of contradiction to a world often obsessed with utility, insisting that the unborn, the elderly, and the discarded were the most precious members of the human family. Despite her global fame and the many honors she received, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Teresa remained a woman of profound humility and prayer, spending hours before the Blessed Sacrament every morning. It was only after her death in 1997 that the world learned of the "interior darkness" she had endured for decades. She experienced a prolonged spiritual dryness, a feeling of being unwanted by God, which she offered up in union with the abandonment Christ felt on the Cross. This hidden suffering allowed her to identify even more deeply with the spiritual poverty of those she served. She died in Calcutta on September 5, 1997, leaving behind a global legacy of charity that continues to light the darkest corners of the earth.