Mother Teresa (Albania-India)
Mother Teresa was persistent in her pursuit to live among the poor. But the Order’s sisters met her decision with hostility and misunderstanding. She suffered very much because of this attitude, she became seriously ill and almost died. For several days she was in a fever, and the sisters did not expect that she would survive.
During her illness, mother Teresa had a vision. She saw herself in heaven standing before St. Peter. “Why did you come here?” St. Peter asked, “You have nothing to do here. There are no poor in Heaven, who will you take care of here?” “All right, I’ll leave, but soon you will have the poor here too, I’ll bring them to Heaven out of the slums.”
The mother superior of the monastery sent Teresa to the archbishop of Calcutta F. Perrier. He listened to her telling the story that she must fulfil a special plan for the Providence, but he would not grant her the permission to work outside the monastery.
After this conversation, he discussed everything with Father Henry, who knew Sister Teresa well. The Archbishop was very concerned about how Rome would react to this, what kind of public reaction could the European origin of Mother Teresa cause in the context of India’s imminent independence, and what political consequences could his decision lead to. In the end, he postponed the decision for a year, and for the time being he asked sister Teresa to pray for a successful outcome of the matter, or join the Order of St. Anne, in which sisters in dark blue saris help the poor. Mother Teresa did not agree with the archbishop. She wanted not only to help the poor, but also to live among them.
A year later, she turned again to Archbishop Perrier with the same request, and the latter decided to give his consent, but only after receiving the “approval” from the Pope and the Mother Superior from Dublin. It took more time again …
In August 1948, Sister Teresa finally received the permission to leave the Order of the Sisters of Loreto, provided that she continued to follow the vow of poverty, chastity and fasting.
On August 16, 1948, mother Teresa left the monastery, forever leaving behind its calm, measured life, and stayed with Hindu friends in a poor neighbourhood. She had nothing but a few rupees in her purse, and a great love for Christ in her heart. She was 38 years old, when she changed monastic clothes for a white sari with a blue border and a crucifix pinned to her shoulder. She bought sari in an Indian shop for four rupees, and made a border and a crucifix herself from a blue braid.
Soon, Mother Teresa went to the Indian city of Patna to complete the accelerated course for medical nurses there. It was quite obvious to her that she could help the poor, with their unsanitary living conditions, only if she mastered the skills of treatment and prevention of diseases.
Thus, the completion of the nurses’ courses was directly related to Teresa’s fulfilment of God’s plan.
The mother superior in Patna, a doctor by education, was sympathetic to Mother Teresa’s desire to live among the poor, but dissuaded her from the idea of eating only rice and salt, as the poor do, since this would be the best way to obstruct the Lord’s plan — for to lead this way of life, you need to have remarkable health.
Mother Teresa understood how much the poor of Calcutta afflicted with diseases needed her help, and she completed the twelve-month courses in just four months. Upon her return to Calcutta, Sister Teresa went to the most neglected poor ghetto Moti Gil, where she spoke with the poor people and helped them the way she could. All that she had was 5 rupees (about 50 cents) and a bar of soap. She helped to bathe the children and wash the wounds. People from the slums were shocked: who is she, this European woman in a cheap sari? She speaks Bengali well. She brings cleanliness, light and warmth!
Teresa slept on the straw floor in a hut that cost her 5 rupees a month. On the second day of her stay at Moti Gil, she undertook to teach five children from poor families an alphabet, drawing letters right on the ground. Sometime later, she was able to rent a small room for the school and teach the children to read, write, and serve themselves.
During all this time, God gave her strength and support: she always found the necessary medicines, clothes, food, and room to receive the poor, and help them. At lunch, children received a glass of milk from her hands, as well as a piece of soap, and could hear her words about God, who is love and who — despite all this wretched reality — loves them, really loves.
One day, a Bengal girl from a wealthy family, one of her former students at St. Anne’s school, came to Mother Teresa, and said that she wanted to stay with her and help the poor. But Sister Teresa looked at things sensibly. She replied that it meant to completely renounce all material wealth, and suggested that her pupil would wait a little.
On March 19, 1949, the girl came to her again, but this time without any jewellery and wearing a cheap dress. She made a resolution. The girl took the name Agnes (after all, that’s what Mother Teresa really was). In this way Mother Teresa gained her first follower. In May, there were already three of them, in November — five, and in January the next year — seven. In a letter to a friend, Mother Teresa wrote: “My helpers are diligent workers. We work together five days a week. There is so much tenderness in their hearts for homeless children! I wish you could see how children’s faces brighten up when the sisters appear.”
Mother Teresa prayed to God that He sent her more helpers, because there was a lot of work. Every morning they got up at dawn, prayed for a long time and went to Mass, so that the Lord would give them strength in their difficult cause of serving the poor. For the rest of the day they worked in the poor quarters.
To their great joy, a certain Mr. Goems offered Mother Teresa and her assistants the top floor of his house.
In 1949, Sister Teresa received Indian citizenship.
As the number of her followers grew, Mother Teresa began to seriously think about creating a new order. The first readers of the “Charter of the Order of Missionaries of Charity” were Father Henry, father Celeste Van Exem, and Father Gelder. The final version of the charter was submitted to the archbishop, who sent it to Rome for consideration by the Pope.
In the autumn of 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Vatican to create the Order of Missionaries of Charity. Pope Pius XII approved the decision to establish the Order on October 7, 1950. On the day when the answer came from Rome, the archbishop served a solemn mass, and Father Celeste van Exem read out the statutory documents. At that time in the order there were 12 sisters. Today, thousands of sisters all over the world celebrate October 7 as the foundation day of the only Catholic order that arose in the 20th century. In less than five years, the order became papal. This meant that it directly submitted to the Pope.
The number of poor and sick people who came for help was growing all the time. The number of nurses of the Missionaries of Charity, who voluntarily chose the way of serving the underprivileged, also increased. To accommodate the new sisters, a suitable facility was needed. And there was such a facility: a Muslim who intended to move to Pakistan sold his big house to the order nearly for nothing, and this house later was named “Mother’s House”. The Archbishop of Calcutta gave money to buy the house.
Initially, candidates for admission to the new order were all residents of Bengal, but soon they began to come from other Indian cities, and then — from all around the world.
To the three usual monastic vows — poverty, chastity and fasting — Mother Teresa added the fourth: to serve the poorest with all the strength, without demanding anything in return.
Vatican did not allocate any funds to the charity, and the young nun relied only on herself. At first, Mother Teresa had very few assistants. The first one admitted to the Order of Missionaries of Charity was a young girl from the city of Bengal, who, along with Mother Teresa, rescued dying people from the streets. Later, many former students of the school at the monastery of Loreto became members of the order.
They took care of the sick, distributed medicine and food, helped the lepers. Some things they acquired on the means of philanthropists’ donations, other things they collected from people, going from door to door: drugs, which would soon expire, rags, food leftovers — everything came in handy for them.
In 1952, Mother Teresa opened the first house for the dying. Later, such institutions began to be called hospices. The story of its creation is as follows: Mother Theresa saw a dying woman on the street, who was so weak that the rats started eating her alive. The body of the woman was fully covered with wounds and boils.
Shocked by this eerie sight, the nun brought the dying lady to the nearest hospital. However, they refused to accept the wretched woman, because she had neither money, nor medical insurance. Mother Teresa was insisting. She said that she would not go anywhere until she was sure that they would take care of the suffering woman. And she achieved her goal: the dying woman was taken to the hospital.
Mother Teresa was genuinely happy over her little victory, but after a few minutes her heart was aching from pain again: on the way home she witnessed several heavy scenes — people were dying right in the streets. Passers-by did not care at all: the inhabitants of Calcutta were used to such sights.
On that day, Mother Teresa realized that a special institution was needed in which the dying could be kept and where they would be taken care of.
So, she went to the town hall. Mother Teresa appealed to the authorities of Calcutta with a request to provide her with a place for such an institution. She only needed a facility, as for other things — she would do everything herself.
The city authorities allowed Mother Teresa to use an abandoned building, located in the Calcutta neighbourhood Kalighat next to the temple of the Hindu goddess Kali, the patroness of Calcutta, as the housing of the dying.
The building, which the city authorities offered to Mother Teresa, resembled a huge barn. The inhabitants of Calcutta called it “Dormashalah”. Pilgrims who came from distant lands to worship goddess Kali stayed in it to rest and spend the night. The Hindu believe that Kali is the goddess of death and destruction. Despite such formidable neighbourhood, Mother Teresa liked Dormashalah very much.
Here is what she wrote in her memoirs: “The building was empty, and the city manager asked if it suited me. The building suited me for many reasons, but primarily because it was the centre of prayer for the Hindus. Within 24 hours we moved our sick and suffering into the “Dormashalah”, and the house for the dying began to function.”
The real significance of such an institution becomes clearer if we take into account the fact that India for many years has been the world’s leader in the export of … human skeletons, and the major part of this “commodity” is regularly supplied by the city of Calcutta. This business was started by a certain Shankar Narayan Sen in 1943, during the “great Bengali famine”. Specially trained agents pulled corpses out of rivers or picked them up on sidewalks, boiled them in huge caldrons till the flesh would come off the bones … European countries and the US are readily buying this terrible commodity for dissecting rooms, medical institutions, and schools. One skeleton earns the profit of $ 100.
That’s why Mother Teresa began to open houses for the dying people in Calcutta. Poor people who lose their lives on the streets of this city, even after their death cannot find peace: they are not buried, but are being processed. No one needs them while they are sick and homeless, but their corpses are used to make money. The great significance of the homes for the dying is that people can die there and be buried humanly.
The inhabitants of Calcutta then said that Mother Teresa turned death into life, and destruction into love. However, such sentiments were not shared by all. There was a strong opposition to this shelter for the dying. 400 Kalighat priests protested, since, in their opinion, Mother Teresa tried to convert the local population into her faith, to impose Christianity on them. One prominent Indian politician promised them that he would force the closure of the centre. He paid a visit to the home for the dying to personally check how the sisters took care of the sick and the dying, washed them, how they processed their wounds, fed those who were already unable to eat. He was accompanied by the media, and people gathered at the hospice. When the amazed politician came out of the house, he made a public declaration: “I promised to close down the centre, and I will do it … But not before your mothers, wives and sisters come here to do what these sisters do. In the temple of Kali there is a goddess of stone, and in this house there are living goddesses.” Sometime later, one of the unhappy ministers of goddess Kali became seriously ill with tuberculosis, an extremely contagious disease that inflicted horror on the Hindus, and nobody, except Mother Teresa and her assistants, agreed to treat him. He recovered, and since that time he actively supported Mother Teresa and her noble cause.
The first home for dying poor people was named “Nirmal Hriday”, which means “pure heart” in Hindi. Mother Teresa called this house for the dying “my purgatory”.
By the time the home for the dying was opened, Mother Teresa had already had 26 volunteering helpers. Only the most devoted ones could bear the strict schedule of the Order of Missionaries of Charity: the obligatory daily prayer at four o’clock in the morning, no property except for one change of clothes. Sisters of the Order slept on straw mattresses right on the floor, ate rice and vegetables, worked 16 hours a day among the poor. Mother Teresa and her assistants picked up the most miserable of the miserable people in the streets of Calcutta: the old men and women, crippled children, lepers — those, for whom there was no place on this earth anymore, — living skeletons eaten by hunger and disease. Many of them were already impossible to rescue.
One day Mother Teresa picked up a dirty sick man in the street. He was infested with lice and fleas. There was such a hideous smell from his body that no one wanted to be around him. Mother Teresa began to remove lice from the poor man. “Why are you doing this?” – he asked. “Because I love you,” Mother Teresa simply answered, continuing her work. The man’s eyes were filled with tears, and he said: “Praise Jesus in the person of Mother Teresa.” “No, praise Jesus in your person,” corrected him Mother Theresa. “It’s you, not me, who shares His sufferings with Him right now. Now Jesus is suffering through you.” The face of the dying man cleared up when he realized that he was loved, that he shared in the sufferings of Christ.
The nuns sought to relieve the last moments of the wretched, so that they could die in a home, on a mat or a bundle of straw, instead of dying like dogs — on the asphalt. They did simple, but very important things: they shared with the dying the last drink of water and a kind word, assuring them that their bodies would be burned according to the Hindu custom and the ashes would be thrown into the Ganga River.
These brides of Jesus never sought to convert the dying to Christianity or bury them not as Hinduism requires.
For more than 40 years of the existence of the homes for the dying, the nuns of the Order of Sisters of Charity picked up fifty thousand people from the streets of Calcutta. Twenty three thousand people died at the Kalighat Home. Mother Teresa said: “There is something that these people need even more than food and a roof over their heads: the understanding that someone cares about them, someone loves them. They realize that even if they have only a few hours left to live, they are loved. Lord, make us worthy to serve the people of the whole world who live and die in poverty and hunger.”
On February 4, 1986, Pope John Paul II visited the home for the dying in Calcutta. With tears in his eyes, he read the inscription made with chalk on a school board: “On February 3, 1986, two people arrived, zero left, four people died. We do it in the name of God.” During the visit, he was able to utter only one word. He was deeply moved. Since that day, Mother Teresa became the right hand of John Paul II, his feminine second self.
Today, the first “Nirmal Hriday” has become a chapel, open to all. In one corner of it there is a statue of Our Lady with a diadem of golden rings on her head. Women who died in this home wore these rings in their nose. “Thus, those who did not have a penny gave Our Lady a golden crown,” Mother Teresa said.
The popularity of Mother Teresa gradually grew, and the flow of donations increased. From the middle of the nineteen fifties, Mother Teresa began to help the victims of leprosy.
In India leprosy was traditionally considered as a punishment sent by God, and therefore the sick had to patiently endure the sufferings and accept the disease. The situation of a leper, especially in India, can hardly be envied. Society turns away from him, even if he is a rich and educated person. In one moment they lose everything: their family and their job. Such people have to wander, looking for something to eat. They live and die like animals.
There are approximately 4 million lepers in the world, of which 3 million live in India. In Calcutta only, there are 500 thousand people affected by this disease. This disease gradually affects the fingers, arms, legs, face, and distorts a person’s appearance beyond recognition. When Mother Teresa tried to explain to people that leprosy is not the Lord’s punishment, but an ordinary illness, which in most cases can be cured, she hit upon a cold wall of misunderstanding and indifference. Then she began to create small settlements for the lepers herself, far from the railway, where they built huts with bamboo, made their own clothes, bandages for their wounds, and bags for medicines.
Mother Teresa did everything to give the lepers the opportunity to live and work normally. The sisters taught the leprous patients to make souvenirs out of coconut shells. The shells were collected in the streets by homeless children.
Teresa organized a campaign with a slogan “Touch the leper with your kindness.” The campaign was a success in multimillion Calcutta. The government of India gave the Order of Missionaries of Charity a piece of land with an area of 34 acres near the city of Asansol, 200 kilometres from Calcutta. Under the guidance of Mother Teresa, with the donations collected during this campaign, a leper colony was organized here, which was called “Shanti Nagar”, which means “City of Peace”. This is a rather large self-sustaining settlement, where the lepers live and work in stores, in fields and pastures, just like ordinary townspeople. Children born in the families of lepers go to school and receive medical care if there is a threat of infection. Healthy volunteers also work with the lepers side-by-side. One of these volunteers said: “The lepers may look awful and ugly, but they are still sensible human beings, capable of great love.”
When the government of Calcutta issued a decree on the forced sterilization of the lepers, Mother Teresa voiced her strong protest. “I will teach them to control births by using natural methods. I will receive and educate every child who is born in the family of lepers. We cannot destroy what God has created in man in such a miraculous way,” Mother Teresa said.
She sent young sisters of the order of Charity to the houses of lepers. Young nuns, who vowed celibacy, explained to adults how to behave, so that children would not come by chance, but only when the parents want it. They explained that leprosy is an infectious disease that is not inherited. But a child who lives with his sick mother can easily become infected. Sisters of the order persuaded the lepers to give newborn children to shelters, so that they would grow up healthy.
As a result, the government’s decree was called back. A whole delegation of lepers came to the headquarters of the Order of Missionaries of Charity to thank Mother Teresa and other sisters for their help and support.
Because of such episodes, the popularity of the Order in Calcutta grew. More and more new sisters joined Mother Teresa to help the poor, the sick, and the abandoned. By 1956, the order consisted of 51 sisters. They taught 1500 children in their schools and looked after 48 thousand patients in hospitals, medical centres, and charity homes. In 1957, the Order already had 71 sisters.
When Mother Teresa went on a long trip, she took a basket of rough work with her, in which she carried the most necessary things. She never parted with it, as if it was the most valuable thing on earth. The basket was made for her and presented as a gift by her “beloved children” — the Indian lepers. She treasured the gift, because she understood how difficult it was to make it with the mutilated hands of the lepers. The government of India highly appraised Mother Teresa’s work, her care for the sick and the poor: in September of 1962, she was awarded Padma Shri (Order of the Magnificent Lotus).
This is what people say about Mother Theresa. The film crew of NBC, who came to Calcutta to shoot a documentary about the Order of Missionaries of Charity, decided to follow the daily route of Mother Teresa. As one of the operators later told, all of a sudden Mother Teresa climbed a huge pile of garbage and began to rake down rotten vegetables and food waste with her hands. At first, the TV people were puzzled, but they were shocked when they saw how she dug out a tiny baby with an umbilical cord. Mother Teresa said that hundreds of abandoned children were found in and rescued from such piles of garbage. Some had physical defects, but for the most part they were just unfortunate abandoned girls (there is a problem of killing unwanted female children in India).
In 1955, Mother Teresa founded the first shelter for abandoned children in Calcutta under the name “Shishu Bhavan” — meaning “Children’s Home” in the Bengali language. Children from different parts of India live there. “I became the mother of thousands of abandoned children left in the streets and on the roadsides, in dumpsters and ditches. Policemen bring them to me, and hospitals give them to me, if the mothers refuse to keep their own children,” says Mother Teresa. “I saved them, warmed them up, and taught them. Many of them found good families in India, America, Europe, but they all remember me. They send me their photographs, and when I look at them, I rejoice for my children. I feel that I love these children like their own mother, the way Jesus taught me to love. Many of them stayed with me — physically and mentally disabled. Nature was cruel to them. But they are the Lord’s children, and they also need love. To be honest, these are my favourites. Sometimes the doctors say that it would have been better if they had died, but we still take them and keep them with us. To deny them our love is the same thing as murdering them.”
Other children always help and care for the handicapped, and there is no greater pleasure than seeing this. Today, shelters for abandoned children exist in many countries around the world.
Soon, Mother Teresa opened a workshop for the unemployed, and a nursing home for the old. First-aid posts at railway stations began to provide free medical care, provide shelter to women and children. The activities of the Order of Missionaries of Charity became known to all of India, and in Calcutta itself Mother Teresa was just called “a living saint” or “a goddess” — depending on the religion of the speaker.