St. Christopher Ladies Guild Woman of the Month

Saint of the Month: St. Teresa of Calcutta

Known the world over as Mother Teresa, this tiny, wizen-faced nun, clothed in a simple white and blue sari, was arguably the most famous holy person of the 20^th century. Born in Albania in 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu lost her father when she was eight. Her impoverished family found comfort and support in their Jesuit parish where she was very active. At age 18 she discerned a call to enter religious life and joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Agnes took the name Sister Mary Teresa after St. Therese of Lisieux. Soon she was assigned to a community in Calcutta where she taught at St. Mary’s School for girls, later becoming principal. She was known to be a compassionate teacher and a talented, hardworking administrator. She described her twenty years there as a time of profound happiness.

In 1946, while riding on a train through the Himalayas, St. Teresa experienced what she described as a “call within a call”. She said that Jesus revealed His sorrow at the neglect of the poor and she sensed that God wanted her to “love Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.” She soon left her convent and set out for the streets of Calcutta to care for destitute men and women who had been left to die in the gutters. Her work attracted followers, one by one, who joined her to become the Missionaries of Charity. In 1952 she opened her first hospice, 15 years before the invention of the modern hospice and 34 years before the advent of palliative medical care and medicine. Calcutta had at that time, and for decades after, the lowest urban standard of living in the world with 70 percent of the population living below the poverty line. How did she find the strength and compassion to daily enter into such squalid, unrelenting, and heartbreaking work without becoming overwhelmed by the scope of the problem? She focused on each solitary person that she cared for as the soul Jesus was “thirsting” to love in that moment. “We know only to well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean, but if the drop was not there the ocean would be missing something,” she said.

St. Teresa’s simple ministry became a living example of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed. (Matthew 13:31-32) The Missionaries of Charity expanded to every continent and today some 4500 members in some 130 countries participate in her work. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize which she humbly accepted “for the Glory of God in the name of the poor.” We often believe that people of such profound holiness must be strengthened by mystical visions and a direct pipeline, so to speak, with God. But after her death in 1997, it became known that St. Teresa had suffered a long experience of dryness in prayer. She felt abandoned, as we all do sometimes. Over time she accepted this feeling as a grace that united her more closely to the earthly suffering of Jesus and the abandonment experienced by the poor that she served. She was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016 and her feast day is September 5^th. Her life challenges us to reflect upon our own “call within a call” and to love ever more deeply. As St. Teresa said, “It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.”

Works Consulted

Ellsberg, Robert. (Sept 2025) “St. Teresa of Calcutta.”  Give Us This Day: Daily Prayer for Today’s Catholic, 56.

https://faith.nd.edu/saint/st-teresa-of-calcutta/

Mother Teresa Quotes (Author of No Greater Love)

St. Teresa of Calcutta – Saints & Angels – Catholic Online