Observations on . . . Mother Teresa

Observations on . . . Mother Teresa

After spending a great deal of time on and devoting a good deal of space to the two previous subjects in this series on recent anniversaries, 2005’s devastating Hurricane Katrina and the world-changing 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had looked forward to writing an innocuous, little piece on one of the two saints I have ever known.

Pope John Paul II was one, Mother Teresa was the other.


Not that I personally met with either the pope or the Catholic nun Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, later to be known as Mother Teresa, but I felt that a few words commemorating the anniversary of her birth in Shkoder, Albania on August 26th, 1910 were in order.

Agnes’ middle name, Gonxha, meaning Rosebud, may be somewhat difficult to pronounce in English but this woman who committed herself at age 12 to a life of religious, missionary work for the Catholic Church led a life of service that wasn’t difficult to evaluate.

I had an old Irish Uncle Mike whom my son labelled a saint and he might indeed have been one. With Agnes Gonxha Boxahiu, there was far less doubt and following her death in 1997 at age 87 she was beatified, made blessed, on her path to sainthood by Pope John Paul II.

There is no need here to detail Mother Teresa’s life or contributions to humanity which were recognized even by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee which awarded her its Peace Prize in 1979.

What is almost as remarkable as her selfless, almost half-century devotion to the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick in India is the controversy even such a life could generate among people who have contended that Mother Teresa was a dishonest fraud and an evil, immoral individual. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1873)