St. Teresa of Calcutta
She was a comfortable schoolteacher for seventeen years first.
People picture her old, in the white sari, on a street in Calcutta. For seventeen years before that she was a teacher at a girls' school, well liked, behind a wall, and reasonably comfortable.
On a train in 1946 she understood that she was supposed to leave and go live among the poorest people in the city. It took her two years to get permission. She started with one street and a piece of chalk.
The part almost nobody knew until after she died: for roughly the last fifty years of her life she felt nothing at all when she prayed. She wrote about it privately, and it frightened her, and she kept going every single day anyway. That may be the most impressive thing about her.
St. Teresa of Calcutta facts for kids
- Born in what is now North Macedonia; she was Albanian, not Indian
- She taught at a convent school for 17 years before starting the Missionaries of Charity
- Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She skipped the banquet and asked for the money instead.
- Her letters revealed decades of spiritual darkness she told almost no one about
Feast day: September 5 · Patron of the poor and World Youth Day
Added to the General Roman Calendar in 2016.
Mother Teresa, help me keep going on the days I do not feel anything.