From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
September 4, 2026 (#129)
The Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa)
For many of us, it seems like just yesterday that Mother Teresa was regularly in the news and traversing the world in witness to the love of Jesus and in service of the poor. But in fact, she died 29 years ago. Perhaps the great majority of Catholics under 40 years old would know little if anything about her. Her feast day, September the 5th, the date of her death in 1997, provides an opportunity for us to remember her, recall the manifold workings of God's grace through her, and to seek her intercession, as the feast days of saints are meant to do. By happy circumstance, or more probably by Divine Providence, three other anniversary dates related to this saint are found in close proximity on the calendar: her birthday, August 26th (in 1910); the day of her baptism, the following day, August 27,, which she referred to as “her “true birthday”; and September 10, 1946, the day she believed God called her to leave everything behind (including the religious community of which she was a member) and embark on her new “call within the call,” which led to her founding a new religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. These Sisters still celebrate this last date, annually, calling it “Inspiration Day.”
Mother Teresa was given the name Anjesё (English cognate: Agnes) Gonxhe (“flower bud” in Albanian) Bojaxhiu at her birth in in 1910, in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Her parents were ethnic Albanians. Her father died in 1919, possibly the result of a political assassination, when she was only nine years old. By the age of twelve she felt an attraction to the life of a missionary religious, and in 1928 when she was eighteen, she went to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto, who had missions in West Bengal, India. She never saw her mother or sister again. (They had moved to Albania in 1934, and the Communist dictator there never allowed Mother Teresa to enter the country. By the time of his death in 1985, they had both died.)
After learning English Ireland, Agnes was sent to India in early 1929 and completed her novitiate with the Sisters of Loreto in 1931, when she made her first vows and received her religious name, Teresa. She made her perpetual profession in the community in 1937, when, in keeping with the custom of the Loreto community, she assumed the title, “Mother.” She was teaching girls at the convent school in Calcutta when, in 1944, she was appointed headmistress. It was while she was on a train to Darjeeling, taking her to a spiritual retreat, on September 10, 1946, that she had the religious experience that inspired the new direction of her life, to serve the poor with a total commitment while living among them. The motivation was to satiate the thirst of Jesus (see John 19:28) for love and for souls, especially of the poor.
She received the permission of the local bishop in 1948 to live among and serve the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta. Soon, some of her former students joined her. She adopted the garb of the women of India, the sari (white with two blue stripes). The community was formally recognized in 1950 by the diocese, and its establishment was confirmed by the Holy See in 1965. Soon after this latter approval, Mother began to send her sisters outside of India. Today there are more than 4,500 sisters serving in 133 countries around the world. There are also two much smaller communities of brothers (in 1963) and priests (in 1984), also founded by Mother Teresa. In addition, she formed the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, the Lay Missionaries of Charity, and the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests for those desiring to share in her charism and spirit and in keeping with their own conditions and/or state in life.
The story of her labors and those of her religious communities on behalf of “the poorest of the poor” have been told many times. They were recognized throughout the world, including by those who granted her the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979 and the United States Congressional Medal of Honor in 1997. And, of course, that work continues to our day. This feast gives us an opportunity to remember what we have seen and heard and to retell the story, especially for those among the young who may not be familiar with it.
For devotional materials, videos, and books, etc. related to Saint Mother Teresa, see:
https://inhisname.com/search?options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=mother+teresa
