Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa's 100th birth Anniversary was on August 26, 2010 and she was remembered all over the world.  She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia to a family of Albanian descent.  At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India.  From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. 

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one".  The suffering and poverty outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that she decided to devote herself to working among the poorest of poor in the streets of Calcutta. 

"It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the doing that matters".   Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers and received financial support.  Thus in 1950, "The Missionaries of Charity" was born. 

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."  Missionaries of Charity's primary task were to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after.  It established homes for orphaned children, leprosy centers, hostels for the dying etc.   The hallmark of her work was the respect to the individual and the individual's worth and dignity.   This was the home for the loneliest and the wretched, the dying destitute and the abandoned lepers.   All of them were received with warm compassion by her and the Sisters.

And this is perhaps the biggest learning from her life full of teachings.   That the larger poverty in the world is loneliness and feeling unwanted.  This is a poverty confined not to the poor but as much to the materially rich and well-off.  "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."

She must have been an obvious choice for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1979.   The year 1979 saw several disputes, conflicts, and extremes of inhumanity and cruelty.  This was also the year when television released the famous "Holocaust" film series - a reminder of extreme inhumanity and torture.

Yet, it was a path breaking decision.  The Nobel Peace Prize was traditionally awarded to statesmen, international organizations, scientists, human rights activists etc.  In that sense, there may have been many to stake the claim.  But the committee recognized the spirit that permeated this work.  "The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it".  It is this spirit that explains why so many people joined her mission and the respect she received throughout the world.

In a world full of terrorist threats and conflicts, her key message may perhaps provide simple and straight forward answers to many of our problems.

"There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."

(Note :  All quotations are Mother Teresa's quotes)