Mother Teresa carved a special place for herself in the minds of Indians. Born in Macedonia on August 26, 1910, Teresa came to India in 1931, after training as a nun in Dublin. She had left her parental home at the age of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns.
She taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, present-day Kolkata, from 1931 to 1948. But, Teresa got deeply affected by suffering and poverty in India and in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the school and work amongst the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
In 1950, she started her own order, “The Missionaries of Charity” after receiving nod from the Holy See. The primary task of the society was to care for those persons nobody wanted to look after. Fifteen years later, the society became an International Religious Family.
Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her contribution to society. Apart from this, she received the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards. She was also honoured with the Balzan Prize (1979).
As the world remembers Teresa on her 110th birth anniversary, here are some of her quotes which will fill you with positivity.
· I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
· What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.
· Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.
· If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
· Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
· The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
· We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
· Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.
· I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?
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