Who would you see as your role model?...
Would it be a family member? School prefect? An absolute legend such as Malala Yousafzai or Ruth Bader Ginsberg? Or maybe you want to go through the spiritual route and include a holy figure as your preference?
Well, to answer that question, I would say that a distinctive role model for all of us would be Saint Teresa of Calcutta for her selflessness, life-long nurturance and assistance to the poor.
Let’s start at the beginning of Saint Teresa’s life and find the reasoning for her charitable nature:
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910, Saint Teresa grew up in Macedonia with her widowed mother who would frequently invite the impoverished of Skopje regardless of culture or religion into their home for a meal. Her mother’s reasoning? “Some of them are our relations but all of them are our people.” Wow. Frame that. Put it in a “Live, Laugh Love” post. Make a banner of it and hang it up during Religious Education (if your teacher is up for it LOL). That singular act, from her mother, of disregarding status and allowing a basic need being granted created a foundation for the young girl to develop her charitable character and ultimately become a guide for others to have the same spirit over the next generations.
At 16, she travelled to join the Sisters of Loreto (ring any bells?) in Ireland and at 17 she travelled to Darjeeling, India to begin her novitiate. She would later become a principal at a nearby charity school called the Loreto Convent. She would then take her vows as a nun in 1931, choosing the name Teresa to honour Saints Therese of Lisieux (patron of missionaries, florists and AIDS sufferers) and Teresa of Avila (patron of religious orders and lacemakers).
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From 1943, she travelled to the Bengal province in India, particularly the city of Calcutta, where she began her charitable journey to support the poor to leave their inhumane living circumstances through the guidance of Christ and the empowerment of faith. This was around the time that Saint Teresa would swap her habit and in favour of her quintessential white sari with blue borders. With many people in the community seeing her huge impact on society as a philanthropist who was kind and caring, she was not shy about standing up for what's right. Let’s have a quick run-down of the many efforts that Mother Teresa has accomplished around the world since her rise of fame in Calcutta, India:
She established an open-air school and a home for the dying in the late 1940’s in Calcutta.
With this emerging community popularity, Mother Teresa founded a new religious congregation called the Missionaries for Charity in 1950.
By the 1960’s she had opened orphanages, hospices and lepers houses throughout India.
In 1965 she opened the Missionaries of Charity’s first charitable house in Venezuela.
In 1971, Mother Teresa opened a house of charity in New York - the first one in the United States.
In 1987, during the Lebanese Civil War, she secretly visited Beirut, Lebanon, where Christians and Muslim populations were deeply segregated. You guess what this absolute ICON did? She literally crossed the borders separating them and helped children from both faiths!
In 1994, Saint Teresa met Hillary Clinton (yes that Hillary Clinton) and together they set up a centre in Washington DC where orphaned babies could be cared for. In 1995, they again founded the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children.
So next time you visit New York, visit the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and of course Mother Teresa’s Home for Infant Children (an absolute bucket list header).
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Concluding a very reputable life-story Mother Teresa passed away on the 5th September 1997. Recognition of her first miracle resulted in Mother Teresa's beatification in 2003. She was canonised on September 4, 2016, as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
To this day, Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s religious legacy has been associated with having a rosary in hand, finding and nursing the sick and dying and poor and caring for the orphaned. She has said that Matthew 25: 34-40 has been her spiritual compass of compassion towards everyone she meets and those from various communities and cultures to express their gratefulness for someone to not marginalise them, but care for them regardless of status.
“‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me’; for I was hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, unwanted, untouchable – and you did it to me”
- Matthew 25:34-40
So with this Lenten season, let us all follow in the footsteps of our role model Mother Teresa and express our humanitarian nature for those less-fortunate for us to achieve more spiritual awareness worldwide.
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