Mother Teresa

The Albanian girl who found God in Calcutta's gutters

Most people know Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor, but few know that for nearly fifty years she experienced what she called "the darkness" - a profound spiritual emptiness where she felt abandoned by the very God she served. Her private letters, revealed only after her death, showed a woman wrestling with doubt while radiating certainty to the world.

Timeline of a Saint

• 1910: Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Ottoman Empire (now North Macedonia)
• 1928: Leaves home at 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland, never to see her mother again
• 1929: Arrives in Calcutta as a novice nun and teacher
• 1946: Experiences "the call within the call" on a train to Darjeeling - her divine instruction to serve the poorest of the poor
• 1948: Receives permission to leave her convent and work in the slums, adopting Indian citizenship
• 1950: Founds the Missionaries of Charity with just 12 members
• 1952: Opens Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), her first home for the dying
• 1979: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress"
• 1982: Negotiates ceasefire during Siege of Beirut to rescue 37 children from a hospital
• 1997: Dies in Calcutta at age 87, mourned by millions worldwide
• 2016: Canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis

The Making of a Modern Saint

When eighteen-year-old Anjezë Bojaxhiu left her comfortable middle-class home in Skopje, she thought she was answering a straightforward call to religious life. Her mother's parting words were prophetic: "Put your hand in His hand and walk all the way with Him." But neither could have imagined the radical transformation that awaited the young Albanian woman in the teeming streets of Calcutta.

For nearly two decades, Sister Teresa lived a conventional religious life, teaching geography and catechism to the daughters of wealthy Bengali families at Loreto Convent School. She was happy, fulfilled, and seemingly destined for a quiet life of middle-class ministry. Then came September 10, 1946 - what she would forever call "Inspiration Day." On a crowded train to the hill station of Darjeeling, she heard what she described as "a call within the call," a divine command to leave the security of her convent and serve "the poorest of the poor" in Calcutta's slums.

The Nobel moment itself came as a complete surprise. She was in Rome when the announcement was made, and her first reaction was characteristic: "I am unworthy." When asked what she would do with the prize money, she immediately declared it would go to the poor. She even convinced the Nobel Committee to cancel the traditional banquet and donate that money too - $7,000 that could feed 400 families for a year. At the ceremony in Oslo, this tiny woman in a white sari stood before kings and presidents and spoke with the moral authority of someone who had touched the untouchable.

But the real story of Mother Teresa lies in the profound spiritual crisis that accompanied her public ministry. Beginning around 1948, just as she started her work in the slums, she entered what she called "the darkness" - a spiritual dryness so complete that she felt utterly abandoned by God. "I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist," she wrote in letters that remained secret for decades. This wasn't a brief crisis of faith but a fifty-year spiritual winter that lasted until her death.

The irony was devastating: as the world increasingly saw her as a living saint, she felt spiritually dead inside. Yet she continued her work with unwavering dedication, perhaps understanding that faith isn't about feeling God's presence but about serving regardless of how you feel. Her spiritual director later suggested that her darkness was itself a form of sharing in the suffering of the poor - experiencing the abandonment they felt.

The politics surrounding her Nobel Prize were complex. While widely celebrated, some critics argued that her approach to poverty was too focused on charity rather than systemic change. They questioned whether her homes for the dying provided adequate medical care or simply offered a place to die with dignity. Mother Teresa's response was typically direct: "We are not social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world."

Her daily routine was punishing: up at 4:30 AM for prayer, then into the slums by dawn, working with the dying, the abandoned babies, the lepers. She would pick up people literally rotting in the gutters and carry them to her homes. "Each one of them is Jesus in disguise," she would say, seeing the divine in the most degraded human conditions. Her hands, always busy, bore the stains of her work - blood, pus, and the grime of extreme poverty.

The human cost of her excellence was enormous. She rarely saw her family after leaving home, missing her mother's death and funeral. Her letters reveal a woman who gave everything to her mission but struggled with the isolation it brought. "I have no one," she wrote. "I am really alone." Yet she channeled this loneliness into deeper compassion for others who were alone.

The Nobel Prize transformed her from a local Calcutta figure into a global icon, but she handled fame with characteristic pragmatism. She used her platform to speak against abortion, calling it "the greatest destroyer of peace," a stance that put her at odds with many who admired her work with the poor. She met with presidents and popes but always returned to her slums, insisting that the real work happened not in palaces but in the gutters.

Her approach to helping the poor was intensely personal rather than political. While others advocated for systemic change, she focused on individual dignity. "Give a fish to a man and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," goes the proverb. Mother Teresa's version might have been: "Hold a dying man's hand and you give him something no system can provide - the knowledge that he matters."

Voices from the Darkness

On her spiritual crisis: "I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist... Heaven means nothing to me - it looks like an empty place." (From her private letters, written during her decades-long spiritual darkness)

On winning the Nobel Prize: "I am unworthy of this prize. I accept it in the name of the poor, the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society." (Nobel acceptance speech, 1979)

On seeing Christ in the poor: "Each one of them is Jesus in disguise. Sometimes he comes in the disguise of a hungry man, sometimes in the broken body of a leper, sometimes in the lonely cry of a child." (Explaining her philosophy of service)

On the nature of her work: "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." (When asked about the overwhelming scale of poverty she faced)

On love in action: "Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired." (From her teachings to the Missionaries of Charity)

The Saint of the Gutters

Mother Teresa's story teaches us that the most profound service often comes not from certainty but from commitment in the face of doubt. Her fifty-year spiritual darkness didn't diminish her work - it may have deepened it, allowing her to understand the abandonment felt by those she served. She showed that sainthood isn't about feeling holy but about acting with love regardless of how you feel.

Her Nobel journey reveals something crucial about recognition and service: she never sought the prize, and when it came, she immediately redirected its glory toward those she served. The award didn't change her work or her lifestyle - she continued living in the same sparse room, wearing the same simple sari, rising at the same early hour to serve the poorest of the poor.

Perhaps most importantly, Mother Teresa demonstrated that extraordinary service doesn't require extraordinary circumstances - just extraordinary commitment to seeing the sacred in the suffering, the divine in the discarded. In a world that often measures success by accumulation, she showed the power of radical giving. In an age of complex solutions, she offered the simple but difficult path of love in action. Her darkness and her light were both authentic, reminding us that the most profound faith often coexists with the deepest questions.