Many people in the world have dedicated their lives to helping others with resources, time, kind gestures and words, or simply by displaying a caring and loving attitude. In the history of humanity, one person who has exemplified these qualities and who dedicated her life exclusively to improving the welfare of the poorest people in the world, was Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Mother Teresa is considered to be an icon of charity around the world. If you don't know her story, you need to get to know more about this person who was so special to humanity. She was a missionary nun who had a strong desire to help the “poorest among the poor” in the slums of India and became one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. She founded a large renowned religious organization dedicated to helping the poor, established many orphanages, and was one of the first to open hospice facilities to care for and comfort the dying.
In doing her work, she was very kind and compassionate. In one of her quotes, she says:
“It is not how much we do,
but how much love we put in the doing.
It is not how much we give,
but how much love we put in the giving.”
Through this quote, we come to understand Mother Teresa’s motivation or the why behind her kind actions. Through her motivation to love others, she proved that her only goal was to help the unwanted, the unloved and the uncared for. She served as one of our best examples of heeding God’s commandment to love others as we love ourselves. She is still an inspiration to many and is remembered for her extraordinary contribution to humanity.
Mother Teresa was greatly admired for her kindness, compassion and deduction to caring for others. While most of us are not able to fully dedicate most of our lives to helping others, we can still take small actions in our everyday lives to help others. Sometimes it's easy for us to get caught up in our own daily struggles and forget to think about the needs of those around us. But Mother Teresa, even when she was in ill health, she never let go of her mission to carry out God's principles of helping others. She continued to manage the Missionaries of Charity organization she founded, an to care for in her words "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."
Many of us desire to change the world and help make it a better place. We often do our best to help others given our life circumstances, but others when faced with adversity end up failing to persevere in doing acts of charity, or do it as bravely as Mother Teresa. Even with all her good works, she was still criticized and humiliated, but she continued to fight for ways to help the poor, resisted persecution and overcame stereotypes to teach us the true essence of charity.
Mother Teresa gave us a beautiful life lesson of what it means to love one another and her example is a strong inspiration and guide for many people, including GSS Agents. Her character, behavior and actions teaches us that material things won’t bring happiness as much as helping others.
After being recognized around the world with countless charitable deeds and with her popularity growing more and more, in 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became a symbol of charitable and selfless work. Then, in 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Teresa.
Finally, Mother Teresa showed us the true meaning of charity, and being a true Agent of God and it is from her, we learn that we should not judge others or ignore the poor, but always offer love and hope to others whenever we can. “The Living Saint,” as she was called, Mother Teresa will always be a symbol of love, care, passion, that is to say: she will always be one of the greatest examples of the kindness that humans are capable of displaying in a world desperately in need of kindness.
Written and Submitted by GSS Agent #103
Sources:
https://www.biographyonline.net/nobelprize/mother_teresa.html
https://www.historyheroblast.com/historyhero/mother-teresa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa
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