St Teresa holding a child.

St. Teresa of Calcutta

September 5, 2027

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 St Teresa of Calcutta was born in 1910 in the city of Skopje (now Macedonia) Menas Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu. The youngest of five children, she lost her father at only eight years old. At eighteen, she left to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, where she took on the name Sr Mary Teresa after Therese of Lisieux. Later the same year she departed for India and taught at a school for girls with the Loreto congregation, eventually becoming principal. 

At 36, Mother Teresa received what she would refer to as “the call within a call,” when she heard Jesus asking her to establish a new religious community dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. After much discernment and consultation with her spiritual director and the Archbishop, she decided to follow that call. The Missionaries of Charity was officially founded in Calcutta, in India, two years later, in 1950. Her missionary order tended to the sick and dying in the slums of Calcutta. They accompanied the suffering in their last days, showing them the love of Jesus by tending physically and spiritually to each person when they were beyond medical help. 

St Teresa holding a child.

The Missionaries of Charity has since spread worldwide. As of 2025 there were more than 5,000 Sisters serving in 138 countries, and Mother Teresa has become a mainstream icon of living one’s life in Christian service to the poor. We know from her writing that there were dark times in Teresa’s life when she did not hear God’s voice; yet she continued to work tirelessly to show the poor God’s love and spread His light all the same. 

Prayer for your Table

Loving Father, 

Through Mother Teresa’s life, you give us an example of brave, gritty compassion so powerful that is now known the world over.   

Mother Teresa took care of the suffering poor at the end of their lives, who otherwise may have felt completely hopeless. Instead she and her Sisters made sure that every person, no matter how sick or how abandoned by the world, felt Jesus’ love in a very real way. Even when she did not feel God’s love and light herself, she did the difficult, unglamorous work of tending to those left behind and at the end of their earthly time. 

Father, help us to dig deep into our own capacity for service and for compassion. Fill us with the kind of determined spirit that kept Mother Teresa working so hard for so long, and help us to carry on the world-changing love that she poured out so generously. 

In Jesus’ Name,  
Amen. 
Saint Mother Teresa, pray for us!  

Menu Suggestions

Choose an Indian recipe, such as Chicken Tikka Masala, for dinner tonight; and/or add naan bread as a side dish to your meal.  

Bake (or buy) cookies with white icing and add blue frosted stripes to match the Missionaries of Charity habits.  

Upcoming in the Liturgical Year