The Lessons We Can Learn from Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa is a Saint that devoted her entire life to other people. To me, that alone is enough for her to exemplify herself as someone who demonstrates the beatitudes more so than anyone else. The fact, her entire life was devoted to helping other people and putting everyone else first. Mother Teresa was a Nun and a missionary. Mother Teresa is known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. She had devoted her entire life to aiding the sick and poor. She was born in Macedonia and her parents were of Albanian-descent, concurrently, she was working in India for 17 years. She was born on August 26, 1910, in the city of Skopje. That is the capital of North Macedonia. The day following her birth, August 27, which was the exact day she was baptized.

Mother Teresa’s birth name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. At age 18, Mother Teresa left to join the Loreto Sisters as a missionary nun in India. In 1946, she traveled to Calcutta, India. During this trip, she got a call from Jesus to live with the “poorest of the poor”. As a result, she chose to leave the missionary and chose to leave the missionary and live in the city of Calcutta to help others. Due to her work with the poor, Mother Teresa was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa passed away in 1997. In 2003, she was beatified, which means that she finally became a saint.

Beatitude #6, Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. What that means is that we do what is right just because we know it is the right thing to do. In my opinion, that beatitude best describes Mother Teresa and her accomplishments throughout her wholesome life. To be pure of heart is demonstrating how one can be free of all selfish intentions that are mainly followed through with solely one's benefit. Pure hearts are extremely rare, thus why Mother Teresa is a very rare soul. The journey to one developing a pure heart is to realize, every one of us has impure hearts. God is the master of finding pure hearts. Further defining why Mother Teresa received “the call”. God has the power to clean one's soul, to change them to pure-hearted. He can develop one to be pure in thoughts, words, mind, deeds, and desires. It not about our physical appearance, intellect, success rate, or social hierarchy in where society sees you as. The sixth Beatitude is elaborating on the point of, put other's needs before your needs. Furthermore, has to do with Life and Dignity of a human person, and that every life is precious and valuable.

'The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred.' 'Human Life and Dignity is understood as a universal ethical and legal principle stressing that all human beings have intrinsic worthiness and inalienable rights by the mere fact of simply being human.” Each one of us has human rights from birth until death, however, the main one is equality. I believe that everyone is equal, simple. No race, culture, ethnicity, beliefs or opinions should change that. All human life is precious and deserves to be treated that way. There is no hierarchy in where we stand, by using any of these factors to decide where you stand in society and how people view you.

Mother Teresa Teresa demonstrated a profound respect for human life and dignity. There are many documented examples profiled from Mother Teresa. Some examples that are demonstrating support to why Mother Teresa best exemplifies the sixth beatitude is one day, Mother Teresa bought food for a missionary with money that she owed to a man. Angry with Mother Teresa, this man took the food from the orphanage as payment instead. Even though this left the children hungry, Mother Teresa still called out to the man, “God bless you”. Second, a Muslim man was severely injured and Mother Teresa let him into the school to nurse him, despite their religious differences. In both examples, Mother Teresa demonstrated forgiveness for others even when someone chose to take food away from the missionary and kindness to others, even when these individuals are different from her. She treated everyone equally, because to her, all human life is valuable and precious, and everyone deserves to be treated equally.

Mother Teresa was always much more concerned about the well-being of everyone else. For example, Mother Teresa also showed the fortitude even when she experienced personal suffering when she was serving others. Mother Teresa was faced with a heart attack, but despite the heart attack and the side effects, and the pain she was in, she continued her work, this goes to show you how pure her soul was. Her soul was the Gpure and non-pure souls in this world. The non-pure souls in this world are souls that are more based on their self-benefit. Furthermore, someone who is rather selfish, hateful, and is only looking to do things, as long as they get benefited from it. Along the lines of this, a pure soul is someone more focused on making other people happen, more so than oneself, Mother Teresa is an example of that. This example demonstrates how although she was in pain, she still worked through the pain to help one in need. And that is the purest form of Non-selfishness.

Another Example is when Mother Teresa was at the Train station, she encountered a man on the ground who said, “I thirst”. Jesus was speaking to Mother Teresa through him and Mother Teresa chose to stay with him. Even though she missed her train, she possibly wouldn’t get one another one. She took her chances, because to her, it was more important than the man was going to be taken care of. Not many people would do that, and for that, is why Mother Teresa was considered a Saint in the Catholic Church.

Throughout Mother Teresa's life, she shared many of her beliefs with others. She believed that children are the beauty of this world. Other examples include, “how can I curse you when God loves you”, “if things happen, it means the Lord wants something to happen, if he doesn’t it won’t”, “there is no point of fighting violence with violence”, “it is so difficult to build, but so easy to destroy”, “everything we do is a drop in the ocean, but if we don’t do it that drop is missing”. These are all quotes from Mother Teresa which demonstrate how she was so orientated in helping to b build others into the b best them as possible.

Mother Teresa calling in life was to help others, no matter their economic, social, or religious status. Mother Teresa was an amazing individual who respected the dignity of human life. She showed human traits that would portray her pure soul, whatever it may be, she would always do it, despite her suffering. She lived her life in the same way Jesus would have lived.

The sixth beatitude, Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. What that means is that we do what is right just because we know it is the right thing to do. Mother Teresa exemplified this beatitude more so than any of the others. She was a pure soul, who would do anything if it meant she was helping someone. Pure souls are hard to find, further elaborating why Mother Teresa is an important and memorable person in the Catholic Church.

Mother Teresa was a woman who strongly believed that the world could work in perfect harmony. That we all could work together to make the world a better place, step by step, drop by drop, and person by person. She would always portray herself as a pure soul, who was always looking to benefit others. She medicates her whole life to helping others and succoring and empowering the disenfranchised, and had overtime taught us all, that we all need to cultivate and live on an attitude of faith. There are many lessons we all can learn from the impact Mother Teresa has had in all of our lives.

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” Nowadays, our generation is always about “me me me and me”. We spend many amounts of our time worrying about ourselves, that we lose focus on everyone else. We all can learn from Mother Teresa, that is isn’t always about you. It rarely is. We need to start being less selfish. Reality is, we are all selfish, we need to start moving g away from the selfish act, and more towards a selfless act.

Be faithful in the small things. “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that strength lies. What this means is that when someone stays faithful, no matter what, you can overcome anything. Sometimes piece by piece, step by step, you can achieve anything. It is just a matter of fact if you stay faithful throughout that process. Mother Teresa demonstrated that to us through those examples.

“What you spend year building may be destroyed overnight; build it anyway. What this means is no matter how hard you tried for something, sometimes, it just doesn’t work out, and that okay, because you still keep working for it no matter what. If your wall is torn down, rebuild it, but this time, stronger, bigger, and better.

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person”. What this means is that it’s okay to be uncomfortable. It’s good to be uncomfortable, it means you’re learning. Being uncomfortable is something so many people are afraid of, but, in the end, it is not that bad. Going outside your comfort zone expands you as a person. “You don’t need someone to tell you they need help; just go forward with faith that you can and will change lives through small means and simple acts of kindness, person to person.” Be the leader.