To love is to give and to be loved. Looking at our neighbor with love reflects the very life of the Trinity.
Look at Oneโs Neighbor
Look outside of yourself, not in yourself, not at things, not at creatures. Look at God outside of yourself so as to unite yourself to Him. (โฆ) Therefore, look at each neighbor with loveโand to love is to give. But a gift calls for a gift and you will be loved in return. Thus loving means to love and to be lovedโit is the life of the Trinity.
She began as Agnes, a young girl shaped by her motherโs quiet lessons of love. Years later, the world would know her as Saint Teresa of Calcuttaโher life now remembered every September 5 on the International Day of Charity, a reminder that even the smallest act of kindness can change countless lives.
Saint Teresa of Calcuttaโs Journey of Love and Charity
Before she was called Mother Teresa, she was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiuโborn on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, a small city in what is now North Macedonia. She grew up in a Catholic family where generosity was a way of life. Her mother, Drana, often welcomed the poor into their home. Agnes once recalled her words: โMy child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others.โ That simple rule of love shaped her forever.
As a teenager, Agnes joined the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary in her parish, visiting the sick and helping the poor. By age 12, she already felt a call to serve God as a missionary. At 18, she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto. First, she went to Ireland to learn English. Then she traveled to India, where she taught at St. Maryโs School in Calcutta. Her students loved her, but her heart was drawn to the people outside the classroom walls.
In 1946, during a train ride, she experienced what she later called her โcall within a callโ: God asking her to serve the poorest of the poor. Two years later, in 1948, she stepped out wearing a simple white sari with a blue border. That sari became her lifelong uniform of love.
In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, an order dedicated to serving the sick, the dying, and the abandoned. What began with a handful of sisters grew into thousands working in over a hundred countries.
Her work did not go unnoticed. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, but accepted it โin the name of the poor.โ She often said, โNot all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.โ
Even as her health declined in the 1980s and 1990sโwith heart problems, pneumonia, and broken bonesโshe never stopped serving. On September 5, 1997, at age 87, she passed away in Calcutta. Nineteen years later, on September 4, 2016, Pope Francis canonized her as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, fixing her feast day on September 5.
The girl named Agnes, who once shared meals with strangers at her family table, had become a mother to the worldโs forgotten. Thatโs why the International Day of Charity, observed every September 5, does more than honor her memory. It calls us to live the truth she carried from childhood to sainthood: charity begins with a single act of love, and grows when we choose to share it.
