The Feast of St. Mother Teresa

Born in 1910 in what is now Macedonia, her Baptismal name was Agnes. 

As a child she longed to become a missionary and in 1928, at the age of eighteen, she joined the Sisters of Loretto to learn English so she could become a missionary. 

In 1929 she was sent to India. Two years later she took her first vows and took her name after St. Therese of Lisieux. 

Teresa took her final vows in 1937 at the Convent School in Calcutta where she had become a teacher and was named Head Mistress in 1944. 

Two years later, as she was traveling by train to a retreat, Mother Teresa heard what was described as a “call within a call” to go and serve the poor and live among them. 

In 1948 she began her work, replacing her habit with a white sari that had a blue border. 

In 1949 she was joined by other women and they sustained their efforts, by begging. 

In 1950, Mother Teresa was given permission by the Vatican to start The Missionaries of Charity, and, two years later, she opened her first hospice house; the Calcutta Home for the Dying. 

All who came were given the chance to die with dignity, according to their faith. 

In the 1960s the missionaries expanded across India to Venezuela, and in the 1970s – to Asia, Africa, and Europe. By the mid-1990s, there were over five hundred missionaries in one hundred countries. 

In 1982, during the siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa brokered a ceasefire between the Israelis and the Palestinians, rescuing thirty-seven children trapped at a hospital. 

She said; “By blood, I am an Albanian. By citizenship, Indian. By faith, a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to Jesus.” 

She died on this day in 1997.

St. Mother Teresa, please pray for us.