I believed in my heart God summoned me into His service. For one year, I saw visions. The next fifty, I lived amidst hell on earth.
My name is Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Gonxhe meaning “rosebud” in Albanian) and I was born on August 26, 1910. My father died when I reached eight years-of-age. Mama raised me Roman Catholic. By the time I turned ten, I had determined already that the religious would be my lifestyle.
Primarily, I recognized the need to learn the English language since it was the language used to teach school children in India. The journey to Loreto-Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland at first created great excitement; however, the thought of leaving my mama behind produced pains in my chest. What if something should happen to mama while I was away?
The thought haunted me as the train chugged slowly down the track, and a steam cloud swiped into teary eyed faces. The whistle blew a long, piercing sad sound. Mama waved both black gloved hands vigorously, scurrying along like a squirrel to keep up with the train as long as possible … as though … she would never set her eyes on her youngest girl again.
Tears bubbled like a volcano in my eyes, her wrinkled face a blur. Her small frame and white hair obscured by a knitted black shawl would be my mind’s photo of her for the remainder of my life.
Once I became somewhat familiar with the English language during the short span of time spent in Ireland, I preceded on to India in 1929. There I began my novitiate in Darjeeling near the Himalayan Mountains.
Finally, the time arrived that I had aspired to all my life. I took my religious vows on May 24th, 1931. I chose the name Teresa after Thèrèse-de-Lisieux, patron saint of missionaries. If only mama could have been there for that occasion. Four years had passed since I’d left my mama at the train station that day, but there wasn’t a day gone by I hadn’t thought of her. I prayed for her daily.
On May 14, 1937, while teaching at the Loreto convent school in Calcutta, I took my solemn vows. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching at the school, but increasingly my heart became disturbed by the poverty throughout Calcutta. The Bengal-famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim-violence in August of 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.
Then one day in 1946, I experienced “the call within the call’ while travelling to the Loreto convent for my annual retreat. 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.
I began missionary work with the poor in 1948. Replacing the Loreto habit, I wore a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border, and adopted Indian citizenship, then ventured out into the slums. Wrapping my arms around those whom nobody would have anything to do, I wept with those who wept. Some hadn’t any limbs, while others were suffering the beginning effects of leprosy.
It reminded me of what the scriptures said in Biblical days. Lepers lived in the garbage sites, scraping their wounds, and were not allowed near their families or friends. They were outcasts, and my heart broke in splinters as I sat amongst them, and listened to their plights.
A little later, I started a school in Motijhil, and then tended to the needs of the destitute and starving.
My efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his appreciation.
Now looking at my diary, that first year was ladened with difficulties. I had no income and had to resort to begging for food. I experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during those early months.
Our Lord wanted me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. That day I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health.
Then the comfort of Loreto [my former order] came to tempt me. ‘You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,’ the Tempter kept on 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. I did not allow a single tear to surface.
I received Vatican permission on October 7th, 1950 to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity. Its mission was to care for the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who felt unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that had become a burden to society and were shunned by everyone. It began as a small order with 13 members in Calcutta.
Soon, I managed to open a home for those suffering from Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity established several outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages, and food.
All this time however, I experienced doubts and struggles over my religious beliefs. It lasted nearly fifty years during which “I felt no presence of God whatsoever”, “neither in my heart nor in the Eucharist. I even expressed grave doubts about God’s existence.
Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness … If there be God “please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul … How painful is this unknown pain? I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal … What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.
I pined for the lost sentiment of closeness with God, and sometimes questioned His very existence. Many other saints had similar experiences of religious doubt, or what we Catholics believe to be spiritual tests, such as my namesake, St. Thèrèse of Lisieux, who called it a “night of nothingness.”
I wrote many letters to my confessors and superiors over a 66-year period. In one publicly released letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, I wrote, “Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear, the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me “that I let Him have [a] free hand.”
Suddenly, news arrived that my mama departed this life. I had given up my entire life to God, and didn’t get a chance to see my mama before her death. Sadness took hold of me in the shape of a vise.
Somehow, I am God’s pencil, and am writing His will. I pray mama waits for me until my Saviour opens his arms, and calls my name because, “I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper’s wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?”
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