Mother Teresa's life story is what led her to pursue justice within our world. Certain events in her life triggered her to help those suffering in the slums of Calcutta and guided her in fighting for justice. Some of those events were in her early life. Her upbringing and other external influences affected how she saw things and wanted to make a difference doing missionary work. An event that dramatically changed her life was when she experienced her 'call within a call' on a journey to Darjeeling. This was when she realized God was calling for her to turn her life inside out and leave the school she was working at. The constant view of people's anguish is what made her continue to address the injustices and work until the very day she died.
On August 26, 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, Macedonia. Later known as Mother Teresa, she was baptized August 27,1910, and grew up in a Roman Catholic family. Her father was political and an Albanian patriot while her mother was very religious. This gave her a unique insight on life and affected the circumstances that led her to pursue justice later on in life. While a child, Agnes lost her father and her mother had to support the five children she had. This loss didn't affect their faith as the family continued to participate in the Church. Agnes and her sister Aga belonged to the Church choir and shared the same enthusiasm as their mother did when it came to the Church. They loved meeting missionaries and by the time Agnes was twelve, she was fascinated with missionary work. The external influences of the missionaries and her family guided Agnes and fuelled her to leave her home at eighteen and follow her dreams of seeking justice and becoming a Nun. After leaving her native land, Agnes travelled to Dublin in Ireland where she was to join the Loreto Sisters at Rathfarnham Abbey. She stayed there for six weeks before she set off to Darjeeling in India. Agnes began her missionary work in 1931 and took her first vows as a religious Sister and changed her name to Sister Teresa. Soon after her vows, she was sent to Calcutta to teach at a school run by the Loreto Sisters - St Mary's High School. After six years of teaching, she took her final vows as a Nun. She spent twenty years at the school but something was always nagging her. Whenever she looked out her window at the convent, she saw the life people were living in the slums. People's homes were either ugly mud huts or hovels made from petrol cans and covered with rough sacking or plastic sheets. Many people didn't even have shelter and got completely soaked whenever it rained. It was said that over a million people lived and died in the slums of Calcutta, keeping themselves barely alive by begging and living in very poor conditions. The circumstances that these people lived is what caused Sister Teresa to feel depressed and saddened. She wanted to make a difference and on the 10 September, 1946, she heard her 'call within a call' while on a journey to Darjeeling. God was telling her to turn her life inside out. She knew what she had to do. She must leave Loreto, the convent where she had been happy, and go work in the slums to serve the poor and address the injustices. 'I heard the call to give up everything and follow Him into the slums to serve amongst the poorest of the poor', Mother Teresa said. She knew it was God's will and she had to obey. This experience she shared with God is what allowed her to pursue justice within Calcutta. If God hadn't of spoken to her, she would've more than likely stayed at the school. This is the most important example of how Mother Teresa began her vocation of pursuing justice. |
For most of her life, Mother Teresa saw people suffering and addressed these injustices in every way she could. An example of this would be when Mother Teresa saw a young man dying outside of a temple. Because he had Cholera which was infectious, nobody went near him and hospitals wouldn't take him in. This injustice is what led Mother Teresa to take the man in her arms and look after him until he passed away. 'He died very beautifully', Mother Teresa said afterwards. This was not the only story of Mother Teresa addressing the injustices within Calcutta. Leprosaria is a hideous disease that affects skin, causing ugly sores, and it attacks the nervous system causing deformities and paralysis. This is only found in colonies with extreme poverty, malnutrition and homelessness. In Calcutta, there were over 50,000 people with this disease called lepers. Lepers were shunned in Calcutta and this angered Mother Teresa as they were forced to live horribly because of it. Mother Teresa set up small clinics with treatment for the lepers so that they wouldn't have to deal with this. Later on with the money donated from people, Mother Teresa built a community where lepers could live and not feel shunned or abused. This would be called Shanti Nagar and was a place where Lepers could live a life of normality. This shows us how Mother Teresa addressed a negative issue and turned it into something positive. She gave the Lepers a place where they could be treated normally and this got recognised throughout the world.
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