HOME | DD

Description
St. Teresa of Calcutta icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 19th 2016
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me.”
- Matthew 25:40

“My child, receive the symbol of our crucified Spouse.
Spread the charity of His Heart wherever you go
and so to satiate His thirst for souls.
The reason for our existence is to quench
the infinite thirst of Jesus on the Cross for love of souls.
Of my own free choice I shall follow Christ in search of souls.”
- St. Teresa of Calcutta

“We did not come to be social workers, but to belong to Jesus. Pray with Jesus and Jesus will pray through you.”
- St. Teresa of Calcutta

I’m very excited to show you all my icon of the newly canonized St. Teresa of Calcutta! She was canonized earlier this September but I was a little late in finishing up my icon of her (and even later in posting it ). It took me some time to decide how to arrange the icon compositionally (because many other icons have her holding children, or caring for the poor, representing he life work), but I decided that I really wanted to try and depict the heart and soul of Mother Teresa’s vocation symbolically with the rosary and the crucifix. So I have depicted her thus: Mother Teresa is dressed in the simple white and blue-striped sari of the Missionaries of Charity (the religious order that she founded) and holds a rosary in her left hand and a crucifix in her right hand over her breast. The crucifix has a golden halo around it, inside which reads “I THIRST” (from John 19:28), the words that made such an impression on her and her vocation in desiring to satiate the thirst of God for love and for souls. This is connected to God’s mercy for men, so I also depicted the rays of Divine Mercy (the Blood and Water that issued forth from Christ’s Heart on the cross) as well. Mercy and Love were the foundations of Mother Teresa’s whole vocation. The rosary symbolizes Mother Teresa’s steadfast prayer life in the midst of life’s difficulties, as well as signifies her especial devotion to the Virgin Mary. This is an image of a young Mother Teresa (aged around 18) that I used as a reference for her face: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/5… . Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve seen another icon of her in which she is depicted as young, so this might be an artistic first!

Also, Mother Teresa has so many great quotes I didn’t know which ones to pick, so here is another small collection of them: www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/…

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Teresa of Calcutta (August 26th 1910 – September 5th 1997 A.D.), was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to her parents Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu in the city of Üsküp (now Skopje), which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. She had an older sister named Aga and a brother named Lazar. She was the youngest of the three. Her father was a Catholic Albanian businessman and political activist who worked for Albania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire and Serbia. He died in 1919 under suspicious circumstances after attending a political meeting in Belgrade (his son believed he had been poisoned by Serbian agents). Anjezë (or Agnes) was only eight years old at the time. Though they had been a fairly well-to-do family before, after Nikollë’s death the family fell on hard times. Her mother worked hard as a seamstress to put food on the table, and in the meantime brought her children up in the Catholic faith. She took them to Mass in the morning and prayed a family Rosary with them in the evening, and also took them to visit the poor and the sick. Their local church was named after the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and, as she herself later said: “From childhood, the Heart of Jesus has been my first love.”

When she was twelve, Anjezë heard some Croatian Jesuits preaching about the missions in India. From then she began to feel the stirrings of a desire to be a missionary in India. In 1928, at the age of eighteen, and with her mother’s permission, she decided to leave home to join the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. Anjezë said goodbye to her family and left for Ireland, never to see them again. She arrived in Ireland and learned English at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham in preparation for teaching in India. A year later she arrived in Darjeeling, India where she began her novitiate as a Sister of Loreto. There, she learned Bengali and some Hindi and began to teach at a school near the Loreto convent. On May 24th 1931 she made her first vows as a nun and chose the name “Teresa” in honor of St. Thérèse de Lisieux. She later went to teach at a high school for girls in Calcutta, India. She took her solemn vows on May 14th 1937. She spent fifteen happy years there teaching history and geography to her students, and was even appointed headmistress in 1944.

In 1943, a terrible famine struck that left many dead and starving in its wake. In August of 1946, Bengal (and Calcutta in particular) was struck by violent riots with massacres being perpetrated by both Hindus and Muslims against each other that left the whole province roiling in terror. In was in this atmosphere that Sister Teresa became increasingly disturbed by the horrendous poverty and violence that she saw all around her. A month later, on September 10th 1946, as she was traveling back to Darjeeling for her annual religious retreat, the 36 year-old nun experienced her “call within a call.” She felt like God was calling her “to give up even Loreto where I was very happy and to go out in the streets. I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.” She said, “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.”

Immediately after she returned from the retreat, she discussed the matter over with her spiritual director who gave her permission to write to the Bishop with her request. Difficulties abounded. First, she had to get permission from her superiors in the order to formally leave the Sisters of Loreto as well as petition the Archbishop of Calcutta for permission to work in the slums. She began her work in 1948 at the age of thirty-eight. Mother Teresa became an Indian citizen and went to the Holy Family Hospital in Patna for a few months where she received basic medical training. She then began her work among the poor by starting a school for children in the Motijhil slum in Calcutta. Later, she began to take care of the poor and starving, and took especial care of the dying. Her first months in the slum were very difficult. She had to beg for food and shelter and medical supplies for the poor. She was also tempted to return to her comfortable life as a Loreto Sister, but Mother Teresa persevered, saying, “Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard.” She adopted the simple white and blue-striped sari as her religious habit so that she would be dressed as a common Indian woman. In 1949 she was joined by a number of young women who, inspired by her example, also wanted to serve the poor. People also began donating food, clothing, supplies, money and buildings for her use in serving the poor.

As she continued on, she asked the Archbishop to petition the Pope in Rome to allow her to form a new religious order. Eventually, on October 7th 1950, permission was given and she founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose mission was, as she described it: “To satiate the thirst of Jesus Christ on the Cross for Love and Souls”, especially in their care for “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first Home for the Dying in Calcutta in what had formerly been a pilgrim hostel to a nearby shrine dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali. She called it, “The Home of the Pure of Heart.” It was to be a place where the poor could die with dignity and peace and die “loved and wanted.” She said: “We take great care of the dying. I am convinced that even one moment is enough to ransom an entire miserable existence, an existence perhaps believed to be useless. All souls are precious to Jesus, who paid for them with His Blood.” Later she opened new houses and clinics for lepers and began rescuing numerous homeless children who had been abandoned on the street. Mother Teresa, recounting an incident when she had gone to visit some lepers in Calcutta, said: “We have thousands of lepers here. They are so beautiful in their disfigurement! In Calcutta, we have a Christmas party for them every year. Once I went to them and told them that what they have is the gift of God, that God has a very special love for them, that they are very dear to Him, that what they have is not a sin. One old man who was completely disfigured tried to come near to me, and he said, ‘Please repeat that one more. It did me good. I have always heard that nobody loves us. It is wonderful to know that God loves us. Please say that again!’” As the congregation grew, it began to attract more attention and soon donations and volunteers began pouring in.

In the meantime, Mother Teresa experienced the long and painful dark night of the soul. She felt a terrible darkness in her soul “as if everything was dead” and felt like she had been abandoned by God. Her feelings didn’t even stop there. She later said: “Where is my faith? Even deep down…there is nothing but emptiness and darkness…if there be a God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such a convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.” In 1961, after speaking with a priest about this interior darkness, she said: “For the first time in this eleven years—I have come to love the darkness.—For I believe now that is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.”
“Suffering has to come because if you look at the cross, He has got His head bending down—He wants to kiss you—and He has both hands open wide—He wants to embrace you. He has His Heart opened wide to receive you. Then when you feel miserable inside, look at the cross and you will know what is happening. Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that He can kiss you. Do you understand, brothers, sisters, or whoever you may be? Suffering, pain, humiliation—this is the kiss of Jesus. At times you come so close to Jesus on the cross that He can kiss you. I once told this to a lady who was suffering very much. She answered, “Tell Jesus not to kiss me—to stop kissing me.” That suffering has to come that came in the life of Our Lady, that came in the life of Jesus—it has to come in our life also. Only never put on a long face. Suffering is gift from God. It is between you and Jesus alone inside…. Our total surrender will come today by surrendering even our sins so that we will be poor. “Unless you become a child you cannot come to me.” You are too big, too heavy; you cannot be lifted up. We need humility to acknowledge our sin. The knowledge of our sin helps us to rise. “I will get up and go to my Father.”
In the 1960s, the Missionaries of Charity were operating clinics and hospices all over India. Mother Teresa opened a house in Venezuela in 1965, and then others in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968. Soon the Missionaries of Charity began establishing more and more houses all across the globe. In 1963, a male branch of the order was begun, and a contemplative branch of Sisters followed in 1976. Lay branches also began operating as thousands volunteered to assist the Missionaries of Charity in their service to the poor. In 1981, the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests was begun, then in 1984 she co-founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers with Fr. Joseph Langford.

Mother Teresa had said: “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” She travelled throughout the world, founding numerous shelters and hospices and spoke at international conferences about caring for the poor and the marginalized in society. She received numerous awards for her work in countries all over the world, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. When she was 73, she had a heart attack while visiting St. Pope John Paul II, and her health began to decline afterwards. Still indefatigable as always, she carried on her work. After numerous bouts of illness, including pneumonia, increasing heart problems, contracting malaria, and breaking her collar bone, she decided to step down as the head of the Order in March of 1997. She passed away on September 5th 1997, at the age of eighty-seven.

She was beatified on October 19th 2003 by Pope Saint John Paul II and then canonized on September 4th 2016 by Pope Francis. Her body currently resides at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.

“My dearest Children, this brings you Mother’s love, prayer and blessing that each one of you may be only all for Jesus through Mary. I know that Mother says often–“Be only all for Jesus through Mary”–but that is because that is all Mother wants for you, all Mother wants from you. If in your heart you are only all for Jesus through Mary, and if you do everything only all for Jesus through Mary, you will be a true Missionary of Charity.

Thank you for all the loving wishes you sent for the Society Feast. We have much to thank God for, especially that He has given us Our Lady’s spirit to be the spirit of our Society. Loving Trust and Total Surrender made Our Lady say “Yes” to the message of the angel, and Cheerfulness made her to run in haste to serve her cousin Elizabeth. That is so much our life—saying “Yes” to Jesus and running in haste to serve Him in the poorest of the poor. Let us keep close to Our Lady and she will make that same spirit grow in each one of us.

September 10th is coming very close. That is another beautiful chance for us to stand near Our Lady, to listen to the Thirst of Jesus and to answer with our whole heart. It is only with Our Lady that we can hear Jesus cry, “I Thirst”, and it is only with Our Lady that we can thank God properly for giving this great gift to our Society. Last year was the Golden Jubilee of Inspiration Day, and I hope that the whole year has been one of thanksgiving. We will never come to the end of the gift that came to Mother for the Society on that day, and so we must never stop thanking for it. Let our gratitude be our strong resolution to quench the Thirst of Jesus by lives of real charity–love for Jesus in prayer, love for Jesus in our Sisters, love for Jesus in the poorest of the poor–nothing else.

And now I have heard that Jesus is giving us one more gift. This year, one hundred years after she went home to Jesus, Holy Father is declaring Little Flower to be a Doctor of the Church. Can you imagine–for doing little things with great love the Church is making her a Doctor, like St. Augustine and the big St. Teresa! It is just like Jesus said in the Gospel to the one who was seated in the lowest place, “Friend, come up higher.” So let us keep very small and follow Little Flower’s way of trust and love and joy, and we will fulfill Mother’s promise to give saints to Mother Church."

~ from the last letter of Mother Teresa to the Missionary Sisters of Charity,
written on September 5th 1997

The Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta is celebrated on September 5th.

St. Teresa of Calcutta is the patron saint of World Youth Day and the Missionaries of Charity.

O God, who called blessed Teresa, virgin
to respond to the love of your Son thirsting on the cross
with outstanding charity to the poorest of the poor,
grant us, we beseech you, by her intercession,
to minister to Christ in his suffering brothers.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Description
St. Teresa of Calcutta icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 19th 2016
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me.”
- Matthew 25:40

“My child, receive the symbol of our crucified Spouse.
Spread the charity of His Heart wherever you go
and so to satiate His thirst for souls.
The reason for our existence is to quench
the infinite thirst of Jesus on the Cross for love of souls.
Of my own free choice I shall follow Christ in search of souls.”
- St. Teresa of Calcutta

“We did not come to be social workers, but to belong to Jesus. Pray with Jesus and Jesus will pray through you.”
- St. Teresa of Calcutta

I’m very excited to show you all my icon of the newly canonized St. Teresa of Calcutta! She was canonized earlier this September but I was a little late in finishing up my icon of her (and even later in posting it ). It took me some time to decide how to arrange the icon compositionally (because many other icons have her holding children, or caring for the poor, representing he life work), but I decided that I really wanted to try and depict the heart and soul of Mother Teresa’s vocation symbolically with the rosary and the crucifix. So I have depicted her thus: Mother Teresa is dressed in the simple white and blue-striped sari of the Missionaries of Charity (the religious order that she founded) and holds a rosary in her left hand and a crucifix in her right hand over her breast. The crucifix has a golden halo around it, inside which reads “I THIRST” (from John 19:28), the words that made such an impression on her and her vocation in desiring to satiate the thirst of God for love and for souls. This is connected to God’s mercy for men, so I also depicted the rays of Divine Mercy (the Blood and Water that issued forth from Christ’s Heart on the cross) as well. Mercy and Love were the foundations of Mother Teresa’s whole vocation. The rosary symbolizes Mother Teresa’s steadfast prayer life in the midst of life’s difficulties, as well as signifies her especial devotion to the Virgin Mary. This is an image of a young Mother Teresa (aged around 18) that I used as a reference for her face: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/5… . Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve seen another icon of her in which she is depicted as young, so this might be an artistic first!

Also, Mother Teresa has so many great quotes I didn’t know which ones to pick, so here is another small collection of them: www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/…

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Teresa of Calcutta (August 26th 1910 – September 5th 1997 A.D.), was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to her parents Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu in the city of Üsküp (now Skopje), which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. She had an older sister named Aga and a brother named Lazar. She was the youngest of the three. Her father was a Catholic Albanian businessman and political activist who worked for Albania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire and Serbia. He died in 1919 under suspicious circumstances after attending a political meeting in Belgrade (his son believed he had been poisoned by Serbian agents). Anjezë (or Agnes) was only eight years old at the time. Though they had been a fairly well-to-do family before, after Nikollë’s death the family fell on hard times. Her mother worked hard as a seamstress to put food on the table, and in the meantime brought her children up in the Catholic faith. She took them to Mass in the morning and prayed a family Rosary with them in the evening, and also took them to visit the poor and the sick. Their local church was named after the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and, as she herself later said: “From childhood, the Heart of Jesus has been my first love.”

When she was twelve, Anjezë heard some Croatian Jesuits preaching about the missions in India. From then she began to feel the stirrings of a desire to be a missionary in India. In 1928, at the age of eighteen, and with her mother’s permission, she decided to leave home to join the Loreto Sisters in Ireland. Anjezë said goodbye to her family and left for Ireland, never to see them again. She arrived in Ireland and learned English at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham in preparation for teaching in India. A year later she arrived in Darjeeling, India where she began her novitiate as a Sister of Loreto. There, she learned Bengali and some Hindi and began to teach at a school near the Loreto convent. On May 24th 1931 she made her first vows as a nun and chose the name “Teresa” in honor of St. Thérèse de Lisieux. She later went to teach at a high school for girls in Calcutta, India. She took her solemn vows on May 14th 1937. She spent fifteen happy years there teaching history and geography to her students, and was even appointed headmistress in 1944.

In 1943, a terrible famine struck that left many dead and starving in its wake. In August of 1946, Bengal (and Calcutta in particular) was struck by violent riots with massacres being perpetrated by both Hindus and Muslims against each other that left the whole province roiling in terror. In was in this atmosphere that Sister Teresa became increasingly disturbed by the horrendous poverty and violence that she saw all around her. A month later, on September 10th 1946, as she was traveling back to Darjeeling for her annual religious retreat, the 36 year-old nun experienced her “call within a call.” She felt like God was calling her “to give up even Loreto where I was very happy and to go out in the streets. I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.” She said, “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.”

Immediately after she returned from the retreat, she discussed the matter over with her spiritual director who gave her permission to write to the Bishop with her request. Difficulties abounded. First, she had to get permission from her superiors in the order to formally leave the Sisters of Loreto as well as petition the Archbishop of Calcutta for permission to work in the slums. She began her work in 1948 at the age of thirty-eight. Mother Teresa became an Indian citizen and went to the Holy Family Hospital in Patna for a few months where she received basic medical training. She then began her work among the poor by starting a school for children in the Motijhil slum in Calcutta. Later, she began to take care of the poor and starving, and took especial care of the dying. Her first months in the slum were very difficult. She had to beg for food and shelter and medical supplies for the poor. She was also tempted to return to her comfortable life as a Loreto Sister, but Mother Teresa persevered, saying, “Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard.” She adopted the simple white and blue-striped sari as her religious habit so that she would be dressed as a common Indian woman. In 1949 she was joined by a number of young women who, inspired by her example, also wanted to serve the poor. People also began donating food, clothing, supplies, money and buildings for her use in serving the poor.

As she continued on, she asked the Archbishop to petition the Pope in Rome to allow her to form a new religious order. Eventually, on October 7th 1950, permission was given and she founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose mission was, as she described it: “To satiate the thirst of Jesus Christ on the Cross for Love and Souls”, especially in their care for “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first Home for the Dying in Calcutta in what had formerly been a pilgrim hostel to a nearby shrine dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali. She called it, “The Home of the Pure of Heart.” It was to be a place where the poor could die with dignity and peace and die “loved and wanted.” She said: “We take great care of the dying. I am convinced that even one moment is enough to ransom an entire miserable existence, an existence perhaps believed to be useless. All souls are precious to Jesus, who paid for them with His Blood.” Later she opened new houses and clinics for lepers and began rescuing numerous homeless children who had been abandoned on the street. Mother Teresa, recounting an incident when she had gone to visit some lepers in Calcutta, said: “We have thousands of lepers here. They are so beautiful in their disfigurement! In Calcutta, we have a Christmas party for them every year. Once I went to them and told them that what they have is the gift of God, that God has a very special love for them, that they are very dear to Him, that what they have is not a sin. One old man who was completely disfigured tried to come near to me, and he said, ‘Please repeat that one more. It did me good. I have always heard that nobody loves us. It is wonderful to know that God loves us. Please say that again!’” As the congregation grew, it began to attract more attention and soon donations and volunteers began pouring in.

In the meantime, Mother Teresa experienced the long and painful dark night of the soul. She felt a terrible darkness in her soul “as if everything was dead” and felt like she had been abandoned by God. Her feelings didn’t even stop there. She later said: “Where is my faith? Even deep down…there is nothing but emptiness and darkness…if there be a God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such a convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.” In 1961, after speaking with a priest about this interior darkness, she said: “For the first time in this eleven years—I have come to love the darkness.—For I believe now that is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.”
“Suffering has to come because if you look at the cross, He has got His head bending down—He wants to kiss you—and He has both hands open wide—He wants to embrace you. He has His Heart opened wide to receive you. Then when you feel miserable inside, look at the cross and you will know what is happening. Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that He can kiss you. Do you understand, brothers, sisters, or whoever you may be? Suffering, pain, humiliation—this is the kiss of Jesus. At times you come so close to Jesus on the cross that He can kiss you. I once told this to a lady who was suffering very much. She answered, “Tell Jesus not to kiss me—to stop kissing me.” That suffering has to come that came in the life of Our Lady, that came in the life of Jesus—it has to come in our life also. Only never put on a long face. Suffering is gift from God. It is between you and Jesus alone inside…. Our total surrender will come today by surrendering even our sins so that we will be poor. “Unless you become a child you cannot come to me.” You are too big, too heavy; you cannot be lifted up. We need humility to acknowledge our sin. The knowledge of our sin helps us to rise. “I will get up and go to my Father.”
In the 1960s, the Missionaries of Charity were operating clinics and hospices all over India. Mother Teresa opened a house in Venezuela in 1965, and then others in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968. Soon the Missionaries of Charity began establishing more and more houses all across the globe. In 1963, a male branch of the order was begun, and a contemplative branch of Sisters followed in 1976. Lay branches also began operating as thousands volunteered to assist the Missionaries of Charity in their service to the poor. In 1981, the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests was begun, then in 1984 she co-founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers with Fr. Joseph Langford.

Mother Teresa had said: “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” She travelled throughout the world, founding numerous shelters and hospices and spoke at international conferences about caring for the poor and the marginalized in society. She received numerous awards for her work in countries all over the world, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. When she was 73, she had a heart attack while visiting St. Pope John Paul II, and her health began to decline afterwards. Still indefatigable as always, she carried on her work. After numerous bouts of illness, including pneumonia, increasing heart problems, contracting malaria, and breaking her collar bone, she decided to step down as the head of the Order in March of 1997. She passed away on September 5th 1997, at the age of eighty-seven.

She was beatified on October 19th 2003 by Pope Saint John Paul II and then canonized on September 4th 2016 by Pope Francis. Her body currently resides at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.

“My dearest Children, this brings you Mother’s love, prayer and blessing that each one of you may be only all for Jesus through Mary. I know that Mother says often–“Be only all for Jesus through Mary”–but that is because that is all Mother wants for you, all Mother wants from you. If in your heart you are only all for Jesus through Mary, and if you do everything only all for Jesus through Mary, you will be a true Missionary of Charity.

Thank you for all the loving wishes you sent for the Society Feast. We have much to thank God for, especially that He has given us Our Lady’s spirit to be the spirit of our Society. Loving Trust and Total Surrender made Our Lady say “Yes” to the message of the angel, and Cheerfulness made her to run in haste to serve her cousin Elizabeth. That is so much our life—saying “Yes” to Jesus and running in haste to serve Him in the poorest of the poor. Let us keep close to Our Lady and she will make that same spirit grow in each one of us.

September 10th is coming very close. That is another beautiful chance for us to stand near Our Lady, to listen to the Thirst of Jesus and to answer with our whole heart. It is only with Our Lady that we can hear Jesus cry, “I Thirst”, and it is only with Our Lady that we can thank God properly for giving this great gift to our Society. Last year was the Golden Jubilee of Inspiration Day, and I hope that the whole year has been one of thanksgiving. We will never come to the end of the gift that came to Mother for the Society on that day, and so we must never stop thanking for it. Let our gratitude be our strong resolution to quench the Thirst of Jesus by lives of real charity–love for Jesus in prayer, love for Jesus in our Sisters, love for Jesus in the poorest of the poor–nothing else.

And now I have heard that Jesus is giving us one more gift. This year, one hundred years after she went home to Jesus, Holy Father is declaring Little Flower to be a Doctor of the Church. Can you imagine–for doing little things with great love the Church is making her a Doctor, like St. Augustine and the big St. Teresa! It is just like Jesus said in the Gospel to the one who was seated in the lowest place, “Friend, come up higher.” So let us keep very small and follow Little Flower’s way of trust and love and joy, and we will fulfill Mother’s promise to give saints to Mother Church."

~ from the last letter of Mother Teresa to the Missionary Sisters of Charity,
written on September 5th 1997

The Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta is celebrated on September 5th.

St. Teresa of Calcutta is the patron saint of World Youth Day and the Missionaries of Charity.

O God, who called blessed Teresa, virgin
to respond to the love of your Son thirsting on the cross
with outstanding charity to the poorest of the poor,
grant us, we beseech you, by her intercession,
to minister to Christ in his suffering brothers.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.