MOTHER TERESA BIOGRAPHY& QUOTES.

Biography

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26,1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. 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. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that 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. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries. In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the Priest branch was established.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

                                              MOTHER TERESA QUOTES

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Mother Teresa

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Mother Teresa

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
Mother Teresa

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 Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.
Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Mother Teresa

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
Mother Teresa

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile.
Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.
Mother Teresa

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.
Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa

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.
Mother Teresa

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
Mother Teresa

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.
Mother Teresa

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Mother Teresa

                                            IMAGES OF MOTHER TERESA