Part 4 - The World is Messy

The longer I spend thinking about generosity, the more I realize it really is a fix for many of the world's problems. With that realization comes the sinking feeling that what I do is so small and probably won't make a difference. If you know what I am talking about, lets take some inspiration from a woman of our times: Mother Theresa.

"Mother Theresa in a church on Burano" by Sergey Galyonkin is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.

Mother Theresa was born in Skopje, Macedonia, as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Her parents were Albanian: her father worked in construction and also traded items such as medicine and her mother was very active in the local church and city politics advocating for independence.

Agnes' father died when she was eight-years-old at which point she grew ever closer to her mother who sowed the first seeds of charitable acts. Even though the family didn't have much for wealth, they regularly invited the poor of the city to their home for food.

At the age of 12 on an annual pilgrimage to the Church of the Black Madonna she first felt a calling to religious life. At 18 she joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin, Ireland, and became Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Therese of Lisieux.

During the first part of her novitiate period, she traveled to Calcutta, India, to teach a girls school. She learned to speak Bengali and Hindi while teaching geography and history. When she was 27 she made her Final Profession of Vows. According to custom, with her final vows she also took the title of "Mother" adopting the name we now know her by.

At 36 years, Mother Teresa experienced a second calling that lead her to found the Missionaries of Charity. She felt Christ calling her to return to Calcutta to continue working with the poverty there. Having sworn obedience, she formally sought permission to pursue this new calling. She took six months of basic medical training classes and then made the trip back to Calcutta with only a vague idea of what she was going to do.

As she began working with the poor, she started open-air schools and convinced the city to give her a run-down building for the dying. Other women began to join her in her work, and the Missionaries of Charity received official recognition in 1950.

I find the most inspiring part of Mother Teresa's story is that she was just openly generous with her life. Her primary plan of action was to be open to God's voice, and when He said "go" she went. Matthew Kelly said it well, "Mother Teresa didn't set out to become a global icon and champion of the poorest of the poor. She just set out to do her part." (pg. 7)

Mother Teresa, Pray for Us.

---

Bibliography of Mother Teresa: https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/mother-teresa

Kelly, M. (2021). The Generosity Habit. Blue Sparrow.