mrt2

Mother Teresa was God's special gift to mankind. Her life was a story of love and compassion. To millions of the sick, abandoned poor and the dying/ she brought help and relief. She dedicated her life to the service of the 'poorest of the poor', as she believed that in serving the poorest, she was serving God.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, then in Albania, Yugoslavia, on August 27,1910.
As a twelve-year-old, she decided to become a nun, and at 18, she joined the Order of Loreto nuns in Ireland. On joining the order, Agnes took on the name 'Teresa'. There, in that distant land, she would get the call to go to India. "It is a missionary country like the countries of Africa," she explained when asked why she had chosen India. And it was in Calcutta that she arrived in 1929, to become a teacher in a Loreto school.
"I love teaching most of all," she said. She devoted 17 years of her life to it.
On September 10,1946, while on a train journey to Darjeeling, she heard the 'Voice of God' from within, asking her to leave the convent and serve the 'poorest, of the poor' of Calcutta. "The message was clear/' she said, "but I had to wait for the permission from the Pope to be released from the Loreto Order and to start on my own."
After getting the Pope's permission, she left the school, discarded the black-and-white dress of the Loreto nuns, and wore a coarse, blue-bordered sari. Sister Teresa became an Indian citizen in the year 1948 and came to be known as Mother Teresa. With the Bible in hand, a cross pinned to her shoulder, less than Rs. 5 in hand, and with boundless faith and courage in her heart, she set up her organisation, the Missionaries of Charity.
It began formally in October, 1950.

In the early days, both money and help were scarce. But that did not discourage her from entering a slum, gathering a few children around her, picking up a stick and drawing the letters of the Bengali alphabet on the ground. Soon someone donated a chair, another a blackboard and teachers volunteered their services, and the school became a reality.
"If He shows you a need to be served, he will provide the resources," she would say.
The first woman that Mother Teresa picked up from the streets was half eaten by rats and ants. Mother could not get her admitted to a hospital, and the woman breathed her last in Mother's arms. It strengthened her resolve to build a home where the abandoned could live and die with dignity. The search led her to Kalighat where the Calcutta Corporation gave her some empty halls.
This became her first home for the dying and she called it Nirmal Hriday, 'the Place of the Pure Heart'.
"Nobody there has died feeling unwanted or unloved. We help the poor to die in peace with God" she said.
From Nirmal Hriday, grew 62 Homes for the dying poor all over India. They are run by the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa's second mission of mercy was towards the poor, orphaned and abandoned children. The Nirmal Shishu Bhavan was the first of her many Homes for them.
"The poor want your love, not only your service. To give love, you have to give a part of yourself," is the unusual message on a colourful poster for the visitors to the Bhavan. Over the years, about 10,000 children have been brought up at the Shishu Bhavan. As babies they were cradled in the arms of the Sisters, and as they grew up, they were schooled and trained for a profession. Later, they were helped to settle down in life.
The third great focus of her work was for lepers. Victims of leprosy, usually shunned, disowned and abandoned by their families, are forced to beg and steal. Mother understood their despair and set up a shop under a tree in a lepers' colony, and gave out medicines, dressings and dispensed simple treatments. From under the tree, she moved on to a van and then to a mobile clinic. When the authorities donated some land. Mother built Prem Nivas, 'the Home of Love1. Now lepers come here from all over India. "When I wash a leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord Himself," said Mother. 'Touch a leper, touch him with love, was Mother's motto.

Mother Teresa's first foundation outside India was started in 1965. Gradually, the Missionaries of Charity became a worldwide congregation of thousands of sisters and brothers, priests and volunteers, drawn from various nationalities. Spread over 120 countries, the order runs educational establishments, clinics, homes for the poor and hospices for AIDS patients. When asked about the transition of her Missionaries of Charity from a small Order to a large institution, Mother retorted, "It is not an institution. It is love in action. It is the sign that it is God's work, not my work. Although we have grown so big, we are still a family."
A grateful world showed Mother Teresa their respect by giving her numerous awards, at both national and international levels. The Nobel Peace Prize, the Leo Tolstoy International Award, the Bharat Ratna, the British Order of Merit, the Ceres Medal of the FAO - the list is endless. To put it briefly, since the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she has received over 50 national and international awards. "These awards are not for me. They are for the poor who are being recognized,"
she said. She wanted nothing for herself, for she considered herself an instrument of God. All the cash awards were spent on the poor and the suffering. When the former Pope, Paul VI gifted her the magnificent limousine in which he traveled in India, she organised a raffle for the car and the money collected was spent on a leprosy centre. When Mother received the Pope John XXII Peace Prize in 1971, the cash award of $ 21,500 which it carried, went to the cause of leprosy patients. The construction of a Children's Home in Agra would have been abandoned if Mother had not donated the cash prize of Rs. 50,000 which came with the Magsaysay Award.
Since the poor are to be found in all parts of the world, Mother traveled wherever she could, setting up islands of hope for the neglected and the poor. She had once said that she was prepared to go to the Moon, 'if there are poor there'. Through her thoughts, words and deeds, Mother showed the world that if one has the will and the 'milk of human kindness', one can "see God in every human being. If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
Mother Teresa's most favored word was 'beautiful'. For her, "to do something beautiful for God is what life is all about. Let every action of mine be something beautiful for God," she used to say. Frequently, she would quote the words,
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was homeless and you took me in,
Whatever you did, you did it to me.
"O beloved sick," she once prayed, "how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ, and what privilege is mine to tend you."

On one occasion, when Mother had overcome a rather serious health problem, and someone told her how happy everyone was to have her back in good health, she replied with a smile, "Well, I went to heaven's gate and St. Peter told me: 'Why have you come here, there are no poor people in heaven to be cared for!" So I came back to continue my work."
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, in Calcutta.
As the world's most recognized symbol of compassion, hundreds of important Indian and world personalities came to pay homage to the 'Saint of the Gutters'. A gentle drizzle fell while the funeral service was being conducted in the Netaji Indoor Stadium, almost as if the weather signified the feelings of the mourners. She was buried in the Mother House, the headquarters of the Order of Missionaries of Charity.
Tributes poured in from all over for one who had dedicated her life to the suffering
humanity. The most apt, perhaps, was by the French President Jacques Chirac, "This evening there is less love, less compassion, less light in the world."
Mother Teresa drew her strength from prayer and the Mass that she attended every morning. For her, the Christ on her crucifix and the one who lay abandoned on the streets were not different from each other. Hundreds and thousands of suffering human beings benefited from Mother's love and care. She used to say, "My work is just a drop when what is needed is an ocean of compassion. If I did not put in that one drop, the ocean would be one drop less."
Mother Teresa showed us the path of service - the most beautiful form of worship. Her indomitable faith, love for all, hard work, perseverance and selfless service will continue to inspire the people of the world for years to come.