From: rich <richarra@gmail.com>

September 5th =E2=80=93 St Mother Teresa of Calcutta MC

When we think about the difference that love can make, many people
very often think of one person: Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. A
tiny woman, just under five feet tall, with no tools except prayer,
love and the unique qualities God had given her, Mother Teresa is
probably the most powerful symbol of the virtue of charity today.

Mother Teresa wasn't, of course, born with that name. Her parents
named her Agnes=E2=80=94or Gonxha in her own language=E2=80=94when she was = born to
them in Albania, a country north of Greece. Agnes was one of four
children. Her childhood was a busy, ordinary one. Although Agnes was
very interested in missionary work around the world, as a child she
didn't really think about becoming a nun; but when she turned 18, =
she
felt that God was beginning to tug at her heart, to call her, asking
her to follow him.

Now Agnes, like all of us, had a choice. She could have ignored the
tug on her heart. She could have filled her life up with other things
so maybe she wouldn't hear God's call. But of course, she d=
idn't do
that. She listened and followed, joining a religious order called the
Sisters of Loreto, who were based in Dublin, Ireland. After two months
in Ireland, spent mostly learning how to speak English, Agnes got on a
boat (in 1928, hardly anyone took trips by plane) and 37 days later
she arrived in the beautiful, busy, complicated country of India.
Here, Agnes took her final vows as a sister and took the name Teresa,
after Th=C3=A9r=C3=A8se of Lisieux, the Little Flower. She spent 15 years teaching in a girl's school in Calcutta, a job that she loved and w=
as
very good at. But then one day, she heard that call again.

The voice in her heart was telling her that she was to make a very big
change in her life=E2=80=94that she should leave her teaching position and =
go
into the streets of Calcutta and care for the poor. So Sister Teresa
listened and said yes. She had lived in India for years and she knew
how desperate the poor of that country were, especially in the big
cities. It was these people, the dying poor, that Sister Teresa felt a
special call to love. After all, these were people who had absolutely
no one else in the world to love them. Not only were they poor but
they were also dying. Why did their feelings matter? Wouldn't they =
be
gone soon enough? Teresa saw these people differently. She saw them
through God's eyes, which means that she saw each of them as his de=
ar
child, suffering and yearning for some kind touch or word, some
comfort in their last days on earth. She heard that call and chose to
live it out=E2=80=94to let God love the forgotten ones through her charity.

As is the case with all great things, Teresa's efforts started out
small. She got permission to leave her order, to live with the poor
and to dress like them, too. She changed her habit from the
traditional one to the sari worn by Indian women. Her sari would be
white with blue trim, the blue symbolizing the love of Mary. She
didn't waste time, either. On her very first day among the poor of
Calcutta, Mother Teresa started a school with five students, a school
for poor children. That school still exists today. She quickly got
some training in basic medical care and went right into the homes of
the poor to help them. Within two years, Teresa had been joined by
other women in her efforts, all of them her former students. She was
soon =E2=80=9CMother Teresa=E2=80=9D because she was the head of a new reli= gious
order: the Missionaries of Charity.

The Missionaries of Charity tried to care for as many of the dying as
they could. They bought an old Hindu temple and made it into what they
called a home for the dying. Hospitals had no room or interest in
caring for the dying=E2=80=94especially the dying poor=E2=80=94so the dying=
had no
choice but to lie on the streets and suffer. The sisters knew this, so
they didn't wait for the poor to come to them. They constantly roam=
ed
the streets, picking up what looked from the outside like nothing but
a pile of rags but was actually a sick child or a frail old person.

When a dying person came or was brought to Mother Teresa and her
sisters, they were met with nothing but love. They were washed and
given clean clothes, medicine, and=E2=80=94most important=E2=80=94someone w=
ho could
hold their hand, listen, stroke their foreheads and comfort them with
love in their last days.

One of the most feared diseases in the world is leprosy. It's a
terrible sickness that deadens a person's nerves and can even cause
their fingers, toes, ears and nose to eventually fall away. You know
that in Jesus' time, lepers were kept away from communities. Lepers=
in
poor countries like India, where they have a hard time getting the
medicines to treat the disease, are often treated the same way. So
Mother Teresa saw people with leprosy in the same way=E2=80=94through God=
's
loving eyes. She got the help of doctors and nurses, gathered lepers
from the slums and began treating and caring for them in a way that no
one before her had tried to do.

Mother Teresa's work of love started out small but it isn't=
small
anymore. There are more than four thousand Missionaries of Charity
today, living, praying and caring for the helpless in more than a
hundred different houses around the world.

From the late 1980s through the 1990s, despite increasing health
problems, Mother Teresa traveled across the world for the profession
of novices, opening of new houses, and service to the poor and disaster-stricken. New communities were founded in South Africa,
Albania, Cuba and war-torn Iraq. By 1997, the Sisters numbered nearly
4,000 members and were established in almost 600 foundations in 123
countries of the world.

After a summer of traveling to Rome, New York and Washington, in a
weak state of health, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta in July 1997.
At 21.30 on 5 September, Mother Teresa died at the Motherhouse. Her
body was transferred to St Thomas's Church, next to the Loreto conv=
ent
where she had first arrived nearly 69 years earlier. Hundreds of
thousands of people from all classes and all religions, from India and
abroad, paid their respects. She received a state funeral on 13
September, her body being taken in procession--on a gun carriage that
had also borne the bodies of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal
Nehru--through the streets of Calcutta. Presidents, prime ministers,
queens and special envoys were present on behalf of countries from all
over the world.

When we think about her work, we can learn all we need to know about
love: it doesn't take any money or power to love. It doesn=E2=80=
=99t take
great talent or intelligence. It simply takes love. Mother Teresa did wonderful, brave work in caring for the forgotten but if there's on=
e
thing she would want you to remember about love, it's that you don=
't
have to travel to foreign countries to practice the virtue of charity.
In fact, love has to start where you live.

She was canonised by Pope Francis at St Peter's in Rome overflowing
with pilgrims and dignataries from every corner of the globe on 4
September 2016.


Each one has his own gift from God=E2=80=A61 Cor 7:7

REFLECTION
=E2=80=9CNot all of us can do great things. But we can do small things wi=
th
great love=E2=80=A6..God doesn't require us to succeed, He only req=
uires that
we try=E2=80=A6.I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.=E2=80=9D =E2=80=A6St Mother Teresa of Calc= utta


St Mother Teresa's Prayer
=E2=80=9CRadiating Christ=E2=80=9D

Dear Jesus, help us to spread
Your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through us and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel Your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see,
no longer us but only Jesus.
Stay with us
and then we shall begin to shine
as You shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You.
None of it will be ours.
It will be You shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise You in the way You love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach You,
without preaching,
not by words but by our example;
by the catching force =E2=80=93
the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love
our hearts bear to You. Amen
--- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2
* Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4)