Mother, now Saint

(I conjured and took this photograph in 2003,

 in Coonoor, using only light and reflection.)

1910 – 26 August: Anjezë  (Agnes) Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born inSkopje, now in the Republic of Macedonia.

1920 - She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary.

1929 - She arrived in India, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling.

1931 - She took her first religious vows as a nun. At that time she chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, opting for the Spanish spelling Teresa.

1937 - She took her solemn vows, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta.

1946 -  She experienced what she later described as "the call within the call". "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." 

1948 - She began her missionary work with the poor.

1950 - She received Vatican permission to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity.  Its mission was to care for, in her own 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."

1952 - She opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the city of Calcutta (Kolkata).

1979 - She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace.”

1980 – She was awarded the Bharat Ratna.

1997 – She died. 

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, the Holy See began the process of beatification. This process requires the documentation of a miracle performed from the intercession of Mother Teresa.

2002 - the Vatican recognised as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, after the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture. Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor.

2003 – She was beatified, the first step towards sainthood. A second miracle was required for her to proceed to canonisation.

2015 -- the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis recognised a second miracle attributed to her involving the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours.

4 September, 2016 - Her officially-granted and anointed canonisation as a saint.

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The above was gleaned from Wikipedia. It does not reflect my views on religion in general, Christianity of any persuasion, or the processes they pursue and impose, with belief or otherwise, on multitudes of interconnected rituals, the recognition of miracles, and the process of canonisation.

Living in India, and specifically having spent in Calcutta the years which formed my intellectual systems and the confines which would guide obstinately my existence, I was aware of her being there. What I want to convey is that there did arise in me admiration bordering on worship in humility, which included small symbolic acts by me of charity and succor. However, my admiration was not unmixed. Later, many doubts about the definition of good and evil, and what motivated either, arose as more and more questions took possession of my mind. Mostly I did not find objective and absolute answers. I live a life condemned by doubt.

Since my adolescence, I have wondered about honours conferred on a person after his or her demise: I was ambitious, and perhaps worthy of recognition in several intellectual, philosophical, sporting and other social activities, which brought me popularity, friendship and admiration. At such times, now eons ago, I asked myself, what if none of these are recognised during my lifetime, and what if I did receive some kind of posthumous reward. Would I know about it, and if not, what would be the purpose to me. This question still worms its way into my system.  

This is not to devalue Mother Teresa's sainthood, or anything that happens posthumously.