mother teresa – the one i admire

blessed mother teresa of calcutta
(new title as of 19 oct. 2003)

hey, what do you know… the pope and i have one thing in common… no no i’m not suffering from parkinson’s disease mind you. both of us admire the same person – the late mother teresa (aka saint of the gutter).

i guess most of you are already aware that the pope had beatified mother teresa yesterday. i’m surprised to see this event highlighted in the star paper front-page . sure i expect to read about it in the star but not on the front page. i guess this is some very big news… concerning 2 well known figures (pope and mother teresa), so they front-paged it. well of course other foreign news like CNN and BBC had also featured the beatification.

when someone had been beatified, she will then be known as ‘blessed’. beatification is one step lower to canonisation… of which after being canonised, she will be known as saint.

coming back to mother teresa, yes she is one person i admire a lot. mother teresa was actually an albanian (not indian as many would have thought). when she was born she was given the name ‘agnes gonxha bojaxhiu’ (wow. quite a mouthful to pronounce eh). she was born on 26 aug. 1910, in skopje, macedonia. for further read of her profile, if you are intereseted, try this
she died on sept. 5, 1997 at the age of 87. i saw her funeral (state funeral) on video and it was so grand. there were many hindus and muslims present at her funeral.

i admire mother teresa’s totally selfless dedicated works to the poor. i can always remember this words of her:

“the biggest disease in the world today is not cancer, TB, leprosy or AIDs. it is the feeling of being unwanted, unloved and abandoned by everybody”.

indeed. if we have some terminal disease but we have the care and concern of our loved ones, we still feel happy, but even though we may be very healthy but there’s nobody to love us and we feel so unwanted, we will definitely be heart-broken and slowly wasted away. by ‘wasted away’ means also slowly our health may be affected. so you see in a way, it is because of the feeling of being unwanted that drive people to sickness.’feeling unwanted’ itself is a disease that cause diseases! therefore mother teresa was right – feeling unwanted is the mother of all diseases!

another wise and apt advice that she left us with, which i always remember, was that she always stressed that the poor must die with dignity. that’s why you see her bringing in those who were dying on the streets to her home, cleaned and washed them and lay them on a nice, comfortable bed. she stressed that it is important for them to die in a home, in dignity and in peace and not out on the streets. yes, they have lived like animals, but they have the right to die like angels, in peace with God.

i’m glad that mother teresa had been beatified as she deserved it. she was one unique rare human person that ever walked on earth.