FROM "OUR SUNDAY VISITOR"...

Mother Teresa’s life mission leads her to sainthood…

From growing up in a single-parent home after the sudden death of her father when she was 8-years-old, to being known as one of the most beloved figures in the history of the Church, the humble, emphatic, humanitarian Mother Teresa will be declared a saint 19 years after her death.

FULFILLING HER CALL

Mother Teresa believed her life mission was to care for “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”. For 17 years she sought to alleviate girls’ poverty through education, before she experienced her second call from God.

After enduring nearly a year and a half of lobbying to leave her convent and pursue her new calling, in 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, she established a leper colony; an orphanage; a nursing home; a family clinic; a hospice; centers for the blind, aged and disabled; a string of mobile health clinics; schools; children’s and family counseling programs; and soup kitchens to assist those suffering in poverty.

During the last 50 years of her life, privately Mother Teresa experienced spiritual dryness, believed to be spiritual tests; however, she continued to participate in charitable works up until just months before her death on September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. In 1999, Pope John Paul waived the customary five-year waiting period after death before the start of the canonization process.

CANONIZATION PROCESS

Throughout Mother Teresa’s last 66 years of life, she wrote many letters to her confessors and superiors; however despite her desire for all of her letters to be destroyed, the Vatican demanded they be preserved. Mother Teresa was beatified in October 2003 after being credited with the healing of an abdomenal tumor and a viral brain infection. The Vatican has set September 4, 2016, as her canonization date and formal declaration of sainthood.

COPIED DIRECTLY FROM :

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR, 2016-2017 CATALOG, p.5, “Display this story on your bookstore website…”

There is more to come on Mother Teresa as we prepare for her canonization on September 4th.