Today marks 110th birth-anniversary of one of the greatest reformers the world has seen – Mother Teresa. Born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa belonged to a family of ethnic Albanians in Skopje. She left her home at the age of 18 and later joined the Sisters of Loreto located in Ireland’s Rathfarnham. Teresa moved to India in the late 1920s and taught history and geography for almost two-decades at Calcutta’s St Mary`s High School.
Though Teresa loved being a teacher, her ultimate goal was to serve to the needy and poor. Therefore, in 1948, she decided to leave the Church and made her way to Kolkata where she began to help needy.
In 1950 she founded the Roman Catholic religious congregation which later went on to be known as Missionaries of Charity. From setting up homes for poor to help people battling diseases, Mother Teresa made many notable contributions across India.
When she won the Nobel Peace Prize “for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace” in 1979, she refused the prize money of $192,000 and asked for it to be donated to the poor in India.
In September 2017, Mother Teresa was declared Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Calcutta by the Vatican Pope for her selfless service towards the helpless people.
On her birth anniversary, let us remember some of the most inspiring quotes by the Saint:
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”
“God doesn’t require us to succed, he only requires that you try. “
“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your stregth lies.”
“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?”
“If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
