Mother Teresa
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Mother Teresa: Navin Chawla, the author of MotherTeresa (1992) di...
Mother Teresa: Navin Chawla, the author of MotherTeresa (1992) di...: Navin Chawla, the author of Mother Teresa (1992) did a remarkable job in capturing the love and sensitivity of one of Christianity's mo...
Navin Chawla, the author of Mother
Teresa (1992) did a remarkable job in capturing the love and
sensitivity of one of Christianity's modern icons. Mother Teresa was
born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Yugoslavia, and in 1979 as a
Catholic religious sister she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She
received the Call of God at the young age of 18 and decided to leave
her home to become a nun in India. Her vocation was towards serving
the poor. On January 16, 1929 she went to the mountain resort of
Darjeeling, 400 miles north of Calcutta to begin her life as a
novice. Two years later she took her first vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience. At Loretto – Entally, she has been a
teacher and Principal.
By the early 1940s, Chawla showed
Mother Teresa met poverty well with the Great Bengal Famine that
stalked India. Many Indians were starving, sorrowful, and lying
lifelessly on the streets. And shortly after that she got another
“Call within a Call” to begin a second vocation to serve “the
poorest of the poor.” She therefore had to have permission to
leave the cloistered life in the convent to work in the streets of
Calcutta. Chawla documented the struggles with her spiritual
confessor Father Celeste Van Exem, her bishop, and the Vatican.
Fortunately for the world she prevailed and permission was granted
for her to do the work among poor souls.
In her new vocation as advocate,
healer, and provider for “the poorest of the poor,” she was
joined by some young women some of whom were formerly her students to
do such such work. So by the 1950s, with some medical training under
her belt, she was already heading the Institute of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. Much is described of the travels of these sisters to be with
the poor all over the world. They would walk or take public
transportation to their assignments in India. However there was a
Motherhouse – headquarters, to coordinate their growing operations.
Mother Teresa pledged to take all the
unwanted babies of the world. Her Missionaries of Charity continue
to give out hundreds for adoption. Her views on abortion have many
detractors. She has advocated for natural family planning that
involves abstention of couples, and the exercise of self-control.
She showed implicit faith in the Roman Catholic doctrine and wanted
to bring prayer back into our lives. Later, the author vividly
described Pope Paul V1 visit to India as guest of the government in
1965. His Lincoln Continental limousine which he used for his state
visit was later donated to Mother Teresa's charities. It was raffled
off for a tidy sum with which she built a main hospital block in
Shantinagar.
Mother Teresa's humanitarian facilities
presently include dispensaries, leprosy clinics, rehabilitation
centers, homes for the abandoned - crippled, mentally retarded, unwed
mothers, sick, dying destitute, and AIDS patients. Educational
activities were ongoing at various schools. There were classes in
sewing, commercial, and handicraft. The sisters made prison visits,
family contacts, taught catechism classes, and Sunday School. Their
activities are centered around Catholic action groups.
Now Missionaries of Charity encompasses
Missionary Brothers of Charity and with the addition to houses
established all over India, there are international houses that
presently exist in many areas of the world. These could be found in
places like Bangladesh, Northern Ireland, the Gaza Strip, Yemen,
Ethiopia, Sicily, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Panama, Japan,
Portugal, Brazil, Burundi, England, USA, USSR, South Africa, and all
over Eastern Europe.
Chawla who had to do much traveling to
keep up with Mother Teresa's activities carefully describes her many
ventures and difficulties in establishing such homes. It all started
with Mother Teresa's desire to live with the poor to understand them
as equals. In one of her experiences - of the first woman who she
picked up many years ago, lying on a street of Calcutta, her face
eaten by ants and rats, it was her observation that such a person was
the abandoned Christ.
After many years of dedicated service
to “the poorest of the poor,” Mother Teresa laid ailing and
millions prayed for her recovery and often she would pull back from
the precipice of death. But on September 5, 1997 – a few days
after her 87th birthday, she went home to be with her God.
Before she died, on March 13, 1997, the Missionaries of Charity
elected Sister Nirmala to succeed her as their new Superior General.
The Indian government honored her with a state funeral, her coffin
being on a gun carriage that once bore the bodies of Mahatma Ghandi
and Jawaharlal Nehru. Chawla's book truly captured the spirit and
life of this extraordinary woman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)