Catholic Identity

MOTHER TERESA
August 27, 1910 September 5, 1997

1910: Born: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Aug 26, Skopje, Yugoslavia.
1928: Agnes joins Sisters of Our Lady of Loretto and takes the name "Teresa," after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, patroness of Missionaries. Sister Teresa is sent to Bengali to help sisters in a small hospital care for sick, starving and helpless mothers.
1948: The Vatican grants Sister Teresa permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and pursue her calling with the Archbishop of Calcutta

"Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and joy. I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an order. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them."

1950: Sister Teresa establishes the Missionaries of Charity, providing food and support for the needy and hospitals, schools, orphanages, youth centres, as well as shelters for lepers and the dying poor. She cared for dying citizens, who were found on the streets rejected by the local people.

1979: Devotion towards the poor won her respect throughout the world and the Nobel Peace Prize.

"How can we answer the challenge posed by Mother Teresa's life? By moving to Calcutta and working alongside her sisters in the slums? Not likely. By volunteer work at her order's shelters in this country? Perhaps. But a more appropriate response might be a resolution to imitate her purity of spirit" (Philip F. Lawler).

1983: Mother Teresa suffers a heart attack during a visit with Pope John Paul II.
1996: Malaria strikes Mother Teresa and she is treated for pulmonary infection.
1997: Mother Teresa died on September 5th in the early afternoon in her convent in India. She was 87.

“You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing. Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me. Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me.”