Mother Theresa Case
Mother Teresa was an extraordinary woman and a role model to many. She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the 3rd child and 2nd daughter of Nicholas and Rosa Bojaxhiu. At a very early age, she felt the call of religious vocation. After he father passed away, she decided it was time to give in to her calling and do the work that God had meant her to do. Her mother was against it at first, but eventually gave her daughter he blessing and warned her to remember to be true to God and Christ. On September 26, 1928 she applied to be admitted to the Loretto Order and left home to learn English in preparation for her assignment to India. She then spent 6 weeks as a postulant of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Mother Teresa’s work is what shaped her to be the woman she was when she died. In early September of 1946, Mother Teresa, then Sister Teresa, received her second call from God, what she called “a call within a call.” This call asked her to server only the poorest of God’s creatures, the destitute, the dying, the lonely, for the rest of her life. She immediately applied for freedom from the Loretto Order without question to pursue her new duties from God. “On December 21, 1948, Teresa opened her first slum school in Moti Jheel in Calcutta. There, with absolutely no financial backing or supplies, she began to teach poor Bengali children to read and write. She wrote with a stick in the dust and begged a place to stay among another order of sisters. The following March, Subhasini Das, a nineteen-year-old former student from St. Mary’s, joined Teresa, taking the name Sister Agnes. Slowly Teresa’s group grew, living in the home of a wealthy Indian citizen, begging for food, and giving love and rudimentary medical care to Calcutta’s sick and dying poor” (Parks 2008). She then became Mother Teresa on October 7, 1950. Over the last years of her life, she devoted it to setting up the many houses of the Missionary of Charity outside of Calcutta. In April 1990, Mother Teresa stepped down from the leadership of her order because she became very ill.
Mother Teresa received many awards in her lifetime. She was