MOTHER TERESA--The Messiah of Love and Peace

"We should learn how to give. But we should not regard giving as an obligation, but as a desire. I usually say to our co-workers: I do not need your surplus. I do not want you to give me your leftovers. Our poor do not need your condescending attitude nor your pity. The poor need your love and your kindness." There are inspirations in one's life, inspiration towards one's knowledge & wisdom, inspiration towards one's lifestyle & moral ethics, but mainly one should be inspired by those who lived their lives selflessly. Their main reason for being here was mainly spreading love, peace, happiness and compassion.

--- Mother Teresa
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This inspiration for us is none other than MOTHER TERESA, the chosen one!

And ofcourse, it shall be a surprise indeed, if one does not recognize this 'angel of love'.

She was a strong and independent woman, who followed her own conscience.

Mother Teresa, in her life felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be missionary to spread the love of God.

The Missionaries of Charity started by Mother has acclaimed world-wide

Her concern all through her life was poorest of poor, sick and deprived.

"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 was a colossal personality of love and care. She was there for anyone irrespective of caste, creed or race, and everyone was there for her.

She always said " the biggest disease today is not tuberculosis or leprosy, it is the feeling of being unwanted" .

There were criticism also towards her philosophy and implementation. But, Mother undeterred and unstoppable, she moved on and on till her sainthood.

Mother Teresa was one of the great servants of humanity. She was an Albanian Catholic nun who came to India and founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata. Later on Mother Teresa attained Indian citizenship. Her selfless work among the poverty-stricken people of Kolkata [Calcutta] is an inspiration for people all over the world and she was honored with Nobel Prize for her work.

Born: August 26, 1910
Died: September 5, 1997
Achievements: Started Missionaries of Charity in 1950; received Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979; received Bharat Ratna in 1980.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, in the former Yugoslavia, she was the youngest of three children. In her teens, Agnes became a member of a youth group in her local pairsh called Sodality. Through her involvement with their activities guided by a Jesuit priest, Agnes became interested in missionaries. At age 17, she responded to her first call of a vocation as a Catholic missionary nun.

She joined an Irish order, the Sisters of Loretto, a community known for their missionary work in India. When she took her vows as a Sister of Loretto, she chose the name Teresa after "Saint Theresa of Lisieux".After a few months of training at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dublin Mother Teresa came to India. On May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught geography and catechism at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. However, the prevailing poverty in Calcutta had a deep impact on Mother Teresa's mind and in 1948, she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.

After a short course with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, she returned to Calcutta and found temporary lodging with the Little Sisters of the Poor. She started an open-air school for homeless children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and she received financial support from church organizations and the municipal authorities. On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Vatican to start her own order. Vatican originally labeled the order as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, and it later came to known as the "Missionaries of Charity". The primary task of the Missionaries of Charity was to take care of those persons who nobody was prepared to look after.

The Missionaries of Charity, which began as a small Order with 12 members in Calcutta, today has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices, charity centres worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, Poland, and Australia. In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise, Pope Paul VI granted Mother Teresa permission to expand her order to other countries. The order's first house outside India was in Venezuela. Presently, the "Missionaries of Charity" has presence in more than 100 countries.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions. These include the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize [1971], Nehru Prize for Promotion of International Peace & Understanding [1972], Balzan Prize [1978], Nobel Peace Prize [1979] and Bharat Ratna [1980].

On March 13, 1997, Mother Teresa stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity and died on September 5, 1997, just 9 days after her 87th birthday. Following Mother Teresa's death, the Holy See began the process of beatification, the second step towards possible canonization, or sainthood. This process requires the documentation of a miracle performed from the intercession of Mother Teresa. In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, following the application of a locket containing Teresa's picture. Monica Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor. Mother Teresa was formally beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 2003 with the title "Blessed" Teresa of Calcutta. A second miracle is required for her to proceed to *canonization.

*[Canonization or canonisation is the act by which the Catholic Church or another religious group declares a deceased person to be a saint and is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process. Canonization, whether formal or informal, does not make someone a saint: it is only a declaration that the person is a saint and was a saint even before canonization.]Mother Teresa was a boon to us from the God directly. She will be remembered forever till eternity.

She is immortal, unexplained, unparalleled and unmatched.

Also See:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa.html

Quotes of Mother Teresa

*"Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family. Be holy – let us pray."

*"I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand."

*"When once a chairman of a multinational company came to see me, to offer me a property in Bombay, he first asked: ‘Mother, how do you manage your budget?" I asked him who had sent him here. He replied: ‘I felt an urge inside me.’ I said: other people like you come to see me and say the same. It was clear God sent you, Mr. A, as He sends Mr. X, Mrs. Y, Miss Z, and they provide the material means we need for our work. The grace of God is what moved you. You are my budget. God sees to our needs, as Jesus promised. I accepted the property he gave and named it Asha Dan [Gift of Hope].

*"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."

*"Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength."

*"There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs—all different religions. But they all come to our prayers."

*"There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything."

*Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and joy.

*I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an order.

*I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.

*When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her.

*It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.

*You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing.

*Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.

*Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little child, you receive me.

*Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.

*If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

*A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her.

*There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family.
Find them.
Love them.

*Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.

*Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.

*Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.

*The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance.

*It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

*I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Ask yourself “How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?” Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.

*Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.

*A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.

Remembering Mother Teresa

Her passing away, moved the countries irrespective of their secular or religious stature.

#A rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. Her life-long devotion to the care of the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to humanity."
Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan

#The Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize panel, Francis Sejersted, said Mother Teresa stood out "as an example of true self-sacrifice in humanitarian work." She was awarded the prize in 1979.

#"Mother Teresa marked the history of our century with courage. She served all human beings by promoting their dignity and respect, and made those who had been defeated by life feel the tenderness of God.''
- Pope John Paul II

#"It is a time of both sadness and joy for all our sisters. It is a time of sadness because we have lost a loved one who supported us in our desire to serve the Lord Jesus…We are joyful in the knowledge that Mother is with Our Heavenly Father." Sister Noreen, Superior at the Missionaries of Charity, Newark, NJ.

#``A heartfelt concern for the poor, the downtrodden and the rejected'' during a special Mass yesterday. ``She saw Jesus Christ in every single person,'' the cardinal said. ``We must carry on her work.'' Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Archdiocese of Philadelphia

#"This evening, there is less love, less compassion, less light in the world. She leaves us a strong message, which has no borders and which goes beyond faith: helping, listening, solidarity."
French President Jacques Chirac

#"She helped the poorest of the poor, gave them courage to live and the feeling of their worth, Mother Teresa will remain unforgotten and be an example after her death."
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl

#"She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world."
Former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar

#"A loss to the entire humanity. She will be deeply missed in our efforts to build international peace, and a just, caring and equitable world order."
South African President Nelson Mandela's

You may click on the following Link for the latest on Mother Teresa:

The Hindu : Arts / History & Culture : U.S. releases stamp honouring Mother Teresa

Commemoration

Mother Teresa inspired a variety of commemorations. She has been memorialized through museums, been named patroness of various churches, and had various structures and roads named after her. Various tributes have been published in Indian newspapers and magazines authored by her biographer, Navin Chawla.[94][95][96][97][98][99][100] Indian Railways will introduce a new train, "Mother Express", named after Mother Teresa, on August 26, 2010 to mark her birth centenary.[101]

Film and literature

Mother Teresa is the subject of the 1969 documentary film and 1971 book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge.

Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor is a 1997 film directed by Kevin Connor starring Geraldine Chaplin. It won an award at the 1998 Art Film Festival.

Mother Teresa's life was portrayed in the 2003 Italian television miniseries Madre Teresa starring Olivia Hussey as Mother Teresa. It was later released internationally as a television film Mother Teresa of Calcutta and received a CAMIE award in 2007.
[Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa ]

Also See