Born in 1910 Agnese Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Uskub, Ottoman
Empire, she was the youngest child in a family from Albania. At age eight, when her father died, she
began attending a Roman Catholic church.
By age twelve she was convinced her life would be a religious one, and
she became fascinated by stories of missionaries. In 1931 she took her first religious vows and chose the name
Teresa for herself after the patron saint of missionaries, Therese de
Lisieux. In 1946 she received what
she called her "call within the call" to leave the convent and serve
the poor.
It was a courageous and wild decision, one that would throw
her into hunger and doubt. She had
absolutely no income and had to resort to begging for supplies and food. In the early days she was constantly
tempted to return to the relative comfort of the convent, but she allowed her
compassion for the poor to drive her onward.
In
1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity with the purpose of caring for
"the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers,
all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society,
people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." Her charity grew from a tiny concern in
a Calcutta, India, into an enormous, world-wide organization.
In
1952 she opened her first Home for the Dying. Next she opened a home for those
suffering from leprosy, as well as several leprosy clinics throughout Calcutta. In 1955, her Missionaries of Charity
opened the Children's home of the Immaculate Heart as a home for orphans. By the 1960s the Missionaries of
Charity were running hospices, leper homes, and orphanages across India, and
soon thereafter began expanding similar operations around the globe.
All
of this was wonderful in a way.
With such a growing organization focused upon the lowest strata of
existence, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity garnered international
fame. She was featured in books
and a documentary. She began
receiving honors from around the world.
She also received some scathing criticism that would follow her
consistently throughout the rest of her life.
Caring
for the poor was fine, according to her critics, but they had problems with her
methods. Some attacked the
conditions in her hospices, others attacked her treatment of the sisters in the
Missionaries of Charity. One
critic said she wasn't doing anything about the condition of the poor as such, but was simply treating people that were poor! Many critics,
seizing upon her open admissions of the struggle to feel God's closeness during
struggle and squalor, even expressed doubts about her faith and sincerity. Her globalism and organizational might
were attacked as commercially exploiting her image as a saintly servant when
she was actually an aggressive empire-builder for the church. One of the most lasting criticisms
against her was the accusation that she was not treating the poor but rather
proselytizing souls to the Catholic Church. Of this she offered no apology, saying, "I'm not a
social worker. I don't do it for
this reason. I do it for
Christ. I do it for the
church." Finally, always and
everywhere, she was vilified the most for her unwavering stance against abortion.
Mother
Teresa dealt with such criticism all the days of her public life. She simply refused to live her life for
the reasons critics wished to assign her.
Not once was she known to recant from her stand on the issues or pull
back from her unpopular positions of morality and service. Not everyone agreed with her values,
but almost everyone was amazed at her steely spunk. Perhaps no moment is as illustrative of this as her speech
given at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., in February
1997. Railing against the practice
of abortion, Mother Teresa at one point said, " What is taking place in
America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill
her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"
Conspicuous among the attendees at that prayer breakfast were President and
First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, politically aligned with the pro-choice
side of the abortion question.
Undeterred by such prominent figures positioned opposite her politically,
Mother Teresa was unafraid and unashamed to state her position defiantly.
This
spirit of defiance, of standing for what she believed in no matter who was in
opposition, was the same spirit that led her to spearhead a rescue of 37
children trapped in a hospital in a fight between Palestinians and
Israelis. It is the same spirit
responsible for ministering to the starving masses in Ethiopia, tending to
earthquake victims in Albania, and assisting radiation casualties at
Chernobyl. It is the strong spirit
of a Rascal driven by purpose and living life fully in the service of attacking
the status quo. It is the spirit
that, at the time of her death in 1997, had produced a charitable service
organization of over 4,000 sisters operating over 600 missions in 123 countries
with over 100,000 volunteers.
In
the words of Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, she was a "rare and
unique individual who lived long for higher purposes." From the viewpoint of critics and
contributors alike, it must be agreed that if anything, Mother Teresa was
certainly a Rascal, a title that despite Nobel Peace Prizes and beatification,
she likely has not received until now!
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