Mother Teresa (2660 words) Essay Example For Students

Mother Teresa (2660 words) Essay Mother TeresaAgnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born August 26, 1910; baptized August 27 in Skopje, in Macedonia. When Agnes was 9, her father died. It was 1919 and Drana had to raise her three children, Aga (1904), Lazar (1907) and Gonxha (1910) alone. They prayed every evening, went to church every day, prayed the rosary every day in may and assisted the service for the Holy Virgin. A great and warm attention went also to the poor and needy who came to knock at the door. During the holidays a stay in the pilgrimage place of Letnice, where Our Lady was venerated, was a custom for the family. Agnes liked to be in church, she liked to read and to pray and to sing. Here mother also took care of an alcoholic women in the neighborhood. She went to wash and feed her twice a day and she also took care of a widow with 6 children. When Drana could not go, Agnes went to do this charitable work. And when the widow died, the children were raised in the house as if they were family. Lazar won a scholarship in Austria, Aga followed commercial school and Agnes went to the Lyceum.(Mother Teresa);A great part of their time also went to the Legion of Mary. She helped a father, who had difficulties with the language, to teach catechism and read a lot about Slovenian and Croatian missionaries in India. At twelve she felt for the first time the desire to spend her life for Gods work, to give it to Him and to let Him decide. But how could she be sure? She prayed a lot over it and talked about it with her sister and her mother. And also the father to whom she confessed she asked: How can I be sure? He answered: through your JOY. If you feel really happy by the idea that God might call you to serve Him, Him and your neighbor, then this is the evidence that you have a call. And he added: the deep inner joy that you feel is the compass that indicates your direction in life. At 18 it is the day. The decision was made. The last two years she assisted several religious retreats in Letnice and it was clear to her that she would be a missionary for India. On Assumption day in 1928 she went to Letnice to pray for Our Ladys blessing before leaving. She was going to join the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto, who were very active in India. September 25 she leaves, accompanied to the station by the whole community: friends, schoolmates, neighbors, young and old and of course her mother and her sister Aga (who will be later a translator and a radio speaker). And everybody weeps. (Mainly from the book: A life: Mother Teresa, Lush Gjergi, Albania). She travels over Zagreb, to Austria, Switzerland, France to London and then to the abbey close to Dublin where the mother house of the Loreto Sisters is. Gonxha learns to speak English and is trained in religious life. She receives the clothes of a sister and chooses the name of Sister Teresa, in memory of the Little Teresa of Lisieux, where they stopped on the way to London. In the mean time her papers get ready and 1928 on December the 1st the crossing to India starts: the country of her dreams. It is a long and tiring journey. Some more sisters are on board but the main group is anglican. For weeks they cannot attend mass or receive communion. Not on Christmas either. But they make a crib, pray the rosary and sing Christmas songs. In the beginning of 1929 they reach Colombo, then Madras and finally Calcutta. The journey continues to Darjeeling, at the feet of the Himalayas, where the young sister will accomplish her training. On may 23, 1929 she is accepted as a novice and two years later she makes her first vows. Immediately after that she is send to Bengali to help the sisters in the little hospital with the care for sick, starving and helpless mothers. She is touched by the endless misery which is there. (A life: Mother Teresa, Lush Gjergi,), (www. americancatholic.org/Messenger/dec1997/editorial.com),(www.drinicom/mother teresa),(www. home1.pacific.net),(St. Anthony messenger Magazine Online),(Newsweek Magazine)She is send to Calcutta to study to become a teacher. Whenever she can she helps in the care for the sick. When her study is finished, she is named to be teacher and has to cross the city every day. The first work was to clean the classroom. Quickly the children learned to love her for her enthusiasm and her tenderness and their number raised to three hundred. In another part of the city there were one hundred little students. She saw where they lived and what they ate. For her care and her love, they soon called her ma. Sundays, whenever there was time, she went to visit this familys. On may 24 in 1937 she makes her final vows in Darjeeling. She is named headmaster of a secondary school for middle class Bengali girls in the center of Calcutta. She was there teacher for history and geography for some time. Close to the institute is one of the great slums of Calcutta. The Beer Industry Essay Other girls follow: in may they were three, in November five, next year seven. And Sister Teresa prayed fervently for more vocations to the Lord and to Our Lady. There was a lot of work. The sisters raised early in the morning, prayed a long time, had adoration and attended mass to find in their spiritual life the strength to do the material work in the service of the poor. Thank God, a certain Mister Gomes offered the top floor of his house to Sister Teresa for her first community. In this year also Sister Teresa takes the Indian nationality. Sister Teresa sees the community grow and knows she can think seriously about starting a congregation. For the first constitutions she asks the advice of two from her first helpers: Father Julien Henry s. j. and Father Celest Van Exem s.j. The last reading was done by father P. De Gheldere. The Constitutions of the Society of the Missionaries of Charity could be presented to the archbishop, who would send them for approval to Rome. Early in autumn the papal approval arrived and 7th of October 1950, feast of the Holy Rosary, the foundation was celebrated in the chapel of the sisters. The archbishop celebrated mass and father Van Exem read the foundation papers. That moment there were 12 sisters. Every year hundreds of sisters over the world celebrate on the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary the foundation of the Congregation. Not even five years after this day the congregation became papal, this means that they depend straight from the pope. It is basic in the Rule of the Society that the sisters, out of love for Jesus, devote themselves out of their free will, to the service of the poorest of the poor and this is as a fact, their fourth vow. This is their way to live and spread the gospel and work for the salvation and the sanctification of the poor. (A life: Mother Teresa, Lush Gjergi,), (www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/dec1997/editorial. com),(www.drinicom/mother teresa),(www.home1.pacific. net),(St. Anthony messenger Magazine Online),(Newsweek Magazine)While the number of poor and sick that asked for help was increasing, the admiration for the free devotion of the sisters was growing as well. Find a suitable house to accept the increasing number of sisters was a real necessity. After a novena to Saint Cecilia the solution came: a muslim leaving town to Pakistan sold his big house for a cheap price and this became the famous Mother house, Lower Circular Road 54A. The postulants first came from Bengaly, then from all over India and finally from all over the world. The foundress herself was novice mistress. For the spiritual training she asked one of the fathers, but for the matters of the house and the Community, it was clear, this was not his responsibility. She did not want an interference from outside in the inside matters. The first confession father was father Edward Le Joly s.j. Like the other Jesuits he was from Belgian origin. He had a good contact and a good co-working and wrote some of the first and most respected books about Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity. (A life: Mother Teresa, Lush Gjergi,), (www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/dec1997/editorial.com),(www. drinicom/mother teresa),(www.home1.pacific.net),(St. Anthony messenger Magazine Online),(Newsweek Magazine)While the society grew in work and number Mother kept praying for vocations and the work kept growing. Houses were opening and some closing down from one day to another for one or another political, social or security reason. The society is very much alive and moving. Mother Teresa went all over the world to help people, rescue children, advise her sisters; to organize and to talk. More and more she was asked to address words to a group of sometimes ordinary sometimes very exquisite crowds. In spite of the fact that her message is often the same, can be captured in few sentences and that she certainly has many times a quite traditional point of view, she is listened to carefully. In spite of her age she continues to search means to help the poor people all over the world and she helps with the means she has. In every continent, even in Russia her sisters are present in their service to the lost, for the love of Jesus. In 1992 by the election of the New Superior general, she is prepared to hand over the responsibility. But she is re-elected. When in 1996 her health starts to fail seriously, due to her heart getting worn out by love and action she expresses the wish not to continue. On march 13th 1997 the assembly of sisters elect Sister Nirmala to continue the beautiful work, for the love of Jesus. On September 5th 1997, late in the evening around 9.30pm, Mother Teresa goes to Heaven in the Mother house in Calcutta. Totally finished and worn out, as she had given herself totally, wholeheartedly, freely and unconditionally to the service of the poorest of the poor, for the love of Jesus. (A life: Mother Teresa, Lush Gjergi,), (www. americancatholic.org/Messenger/dec1997/editorial.com),(www.drinicom/mother teresa),(www. home1.pacific.net),(St. Anthony messenger Magazine Online),(Newsweek Magazine) Stephanie Johnson