The Fourth Vow, 1979

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In 2016, the Catholic Church honoured Mother Teresa, canonising her as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu grew up in Albania, and was the youngest of three children. Anjezë’s parents were fervent Catholics, and the little girl would often go with her mother to visit the less fortunate, orphans and alcoholics. Anjezë’s heart was heavy at seeing the suffering of the Albanians around her. Her soul was a delicate flower, and indeed this was the meaning of her baptismal name, Gonxhe. Her mother often told her: “When you do good, do it as if you were throwing a rock into the sea.” Anjezë did so, often forgetting the acts of good she had done. They would never come back to her; there was no recovering a stone from the bottom of the ocean. Anjezë recognized her calling to the religious life when she was only twelve. Anjezë had a destiny that only her mother could discern: “My daughter would never accept even a mouthful she could not share with others.” After a pious upbringing in Albania, she left her home country at eighteen with the intention of becoming a nun, and joined the Sisters of Loretto. Anjezë Gonxhe took the name Teresa, in homage to the French Carmelite saint, Thérèse of Lisieux. Soon, the name Teresa would be known around the world. A few months later, she left for India to begin her novitiate.

Calcutta was a 2000-year-old city with a population greater than that of Bombay, and poverty was rife. Who could possibly see a glimmer of the divine eternal in the place Indians called “the dying city?” Upon her arrival, Sister Teresa was shocked at the scale of misery she encountered there. The poor numbered in the millions; there was tuberculosis, leprosy, homelessness, blindness and hunger. Calcutta, the thousand-year city, poor and without hope. Who might attempt to help all these people? Thousands in Samaria had sought out Jesus and his apostles in order to obtain a miracle from the Almighty, a divine cure for their ills. But what good would it do to pray to the Father for loaves and fishes in Calcutta? Teresa had nothing, not even a base for her mission of charity. She saw Jesus among the poor; in all these people who had been swept aside by the world, she saw the heavenly kingdom.

Without income, she begged for food and lodgings. She learned what it meant to go without, to experience true solitude and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during those first months. Later, in her biography, she would write: “Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, 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 Loretto 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 let a single tear come.”

And so Sister Teresa became Mother Teresa, and sewed herself a sari of white cotton with two blue borders. She left the sisters of Loretto in 1948 with five rupees in her pocket. She founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation which now has over 4,500 nuns, and was active in 133 countries as of 2012. The congregation also manages soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, and social programs for children and families, as well as orphanages and schools. Its members take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, as well as a fourth vow – to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor."

Alan Alfredo Geday