Mother Teresa was a nun who devoted her life to helping the poor and sick. She was born in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Her parents were of Albanian descent. Her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu, was a successful merchant, and her mother, Drana Bojaxhiu, was a homemaker. Mother Teresa had two brothers and a sister.
In 1928, at the age of 18, she left her home in Skopje to join the Sisters of Loreto, a Catholic religious order that had missionaries in India. After a few months of training in Dublin, Ireland, she was sent to Calcutta, India, where she took her final vows and became a nun.
Mother Teresa spent the rest of her life working in the slums of Calcutta. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order dedicated to helping the poor, and she opened homes for the dying and for orphans. She also founded a leper colony and a clinic for the treatment of tuberculosis.
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She continued her work until her death on September 5, 1997.
Table of Contents:
1. Early Life
2. Calling to Serve
3. The Missionaries of Charity
4. The Nobel Peace Prize
5. Death and Legacy
6. Mother Teresa’s Top Quotes
7. Mother Teresa’s Top Quotes
Early Life:
Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, as Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. Her parents, Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu, were of Albanian descent. Nikola was a successful businessman, and Drana was a homemaker. Anjeze was the youngest of the couple’s three children; her older siblings were Aga (born 1906) and Lazar (born 1908).
As a child, Gonxhe was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their work among the poor. She was especially drawn to the work of Sister Loreto, an Irish nun who had founded a school in India. Gonxhe was also influenced by the stories of another Albanian nun, Mother Alphonse, who had cared for the sick and needy in Albania.
In 1928, Gonxhe left home to join the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin, Ireland. She began her novitiate (a period of training for religious sisters) at the order’s motherhouse in Darjeeling, India. The following year, she took her first religious vows as a nun and was given the name Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She continued her studies at the Loreto convent in Calcutta, earning a teaching diploma in English.
Calling to Serve:
In 1946, Mother Teresa experienced a profound religious transformation. While on a train journey from Calcutta to Darjeeling, she said she heard the voice of God asking her to leave the Loreto order and work among the poorest of the poor.
Although she initially resisted the call, Mother Teresa eventually obeyed. In 1948, she received permission from her superiors to leave the order and venture out into the streets of Calcutta to help the city’s poorest residents.
Mother Teresa began her work by setting up a school in a slum area. She then started a home for the dying, which later evolved into the Missionaries of Charity’s hospice, Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). In 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Vatican to start her own religious order, the Missionaries of Charity.
The Missionaries of Charity:
The Missionaries of Charity was a religious order established by Mother Teresa to help the poor, sick, and dying. The order’s members, who were commonly known as “sisters,” took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and dedicated their lives to serving the poor.
The order operated homes for the dying, orphanages, soup kitchens, leper colonies, and other care centers around the world. They also ran a mobile clinic that served the poor in the Calcutta slums.
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Missionaries of Charity.
Death and Legacy:
Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. At the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters and an association of more than 500 priests and brothers who operated 610 missions in 123 countries.
After her death, Mother Teresa was succeeded as head of the Missionaries of Charity by Sister Nirmala. In 2003, Pope John Paul II approved Mother Teresa’s sainthood cause, and she was formally canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church by Pope Francis in 2016.
Mother Teresa’s Top Quotes:
“I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.” ― Mother Teresa
“Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another.” ― Mother Teresa
“I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things.” ― Mother Teresa
“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.” ― Mother Teresa
“He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness.” ― Mother Teresa
“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” ― Mother Teresa
“If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway.” ― Mother Teresa
“Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.” ― Mother Teresa
“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway.” ― Mother Teresa
“Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” ― Mother Teresa
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” ― Mother Teresa
“Humility is truth, therefore in all sincerity, we must be able to look up and say, I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. By yourself you can do nothing, have nothing but sin, weakness and misery. All the gifts of nature and grace you have them from God.” ― Mother Teresa
“Spread the love of God through your life but only use words when necessary.” ― Mother Teresa
“There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.” ― Mother Teresa
“There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.” ― Mother Teresa
“Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best.” ― Mother Teresa
“True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. That is why we must pray to God and ask Him to give us the courage to love.” ― Mother Teresa
“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?” ― Mother Teresa
“Smiling novices. I can hear the music of your laughter of joy. Learn, my children, to be holy, for true holiness consists of doing God’s work with a smile.” ― Mother Teresa
“I want you to be concerned about your next-door neighbor. Do you know your next-door neighbor?” ― Mother Teresa
“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want.” ― Mother Teresa
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.” ― Mother Teresa
“If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.” ― Mother Teresa
“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” ― Mother Teresa
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ― Mother Teresa
“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” ― Mother Teresa
“Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.” ― Mother Teresa
“We interfere with God’s plans when we push in someone or something else not suitable for us. Be strict with yourself, and then be very strict with what you are receiving from the outside.” ― Mother Teresa
“God doesn’t require us to succeed, he only requires that you try.” ― Mother Teresa
“We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.” ― Mother Teresa
“Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.” ― Mother Teresa
“Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.” ― Mother Teresa
“Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.” ― Mother Teresa
“Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.” ― Mother Teresa
“Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier.” ― Mother Teresa
“Go out into the world today and love the people you meet. Let your presence light new light in the hearts of people.” ― Mother Teresa
“Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway.” ― Mother Teresa
“Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.” ― Mother Teresa
“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” ― Mother Teresa
“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” ― Mother Teresa
“There is thing you can do but I cannot and there is thing I can but you cannot; so, let us make something beautiful for God.” ― Mother Teresa
“The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how wide we draw the circle of what we call family.” ― Mother Teresa
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” ― Mother Teresa
“There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.” ― Mother Teresa
“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.” ― Mother Teresa
“One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment.” ― Mother Teresa
“Yes, you must live life beautifully and not allow the spirit of the world that makes gods out of power, riches, and pleasure make you to forget that you have been created for greater things.” ― Mother Teresa
“I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering.” ― Mother Teresa
“We fear the future because we are wasting today.” ― Mother Teresa
“If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.” ― Mother Teresa
Source: Wikipedia Nobel Prize Britannica Biography Vatican Mother Teresa Good Reads Biography Online Brainyquote Catholic