The Way Of Love

IT HAS MANY AVATARS. POETS HAVE CELEBRATED ITS VARIOUS FORMS DOWN THE AGES, AND IT CONTINUES TO BE A MUSE FOR ALL GENRES OF ART. IT IS LOVE. THE BHAGAVAD GITA LISTS LOVE – PREETHI – AMONG THE QUALITIES THAT CHARACTERISE THE IDEAL WOMAN

- Susan Philip

She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in far-away Macedonia. In her own words, she was Albanian by blood, and by citizenship, an Indian. But she belongs to the world, which knows her as Mother Teresa.

She came to India as a member of the Irish order of nuns known as the Sisters of Loreto in 1929 and started her career in the country as a teacher in a school in Darjeeling. In course of time, she took her final vows as a Catholic nun, and shifted to a school in Kolkata, then Calcutta. As a teacher, she reached out to her students, offering love and guidance. But it was the abjectly poor, the sick, the lonely and the dying people that she saw outside the walls of the convent who kept intruding into her thoughts. Finally, her mission became clear to her. She heard God’s voice telling her to love and care for those who had no one to love and care for them. She founded the Missionaries of Charity to do just that, starting with zero material resources, and a heart filled with limitless love.

Mother Teresa braved suspicion and insults, spitting and stone-pelting. She went where no one would have gone voluntarily, into squalid slums filled with dirt and disease, and into colonies of lepers and outcasts, and did whatever she could to ease their suffering. She established the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan where unwanted children find love and care. Her guiding principle was to do small things with love. As she once said, “It may happen that a mere smile, a short visit, the lighting of a lamp, writing a letter for a blind man, carrying a bucket of charcoal, offering a pair of sandals, reading the newspaper—may, in fact, be our love of God in action.”