Human Flower Project

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Mother of Calcutta

Happy birthday to the “world-peace-dream-flower.”

Visitors pay their respects at Mother Teresa’s tomb

Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta

Photo: Sandy Ao

We’ve been holding something from you: Sandy Ao’s photographs from the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata (Calcutta). For today is the birthday of founder Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa, born 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia.

Just one month ago, Sandy wrote to us: “Today went to Missionaries of Charity, that’s Mother Teresa’s Home, for a change instead of Mother Kali and her Hibiscus. I took some pictures.

Statue of Mother Teresa with floral offerings

Photo: Sandy Ao

“It’s tuberose, roses and gerbera for Mother Teresa’s tomb. You must be knowing Calcutta is also called City of Joy, due to the reason that in this city we get lots of opportunities to do some service to another human, and this is also the city where Mother Teresa found compassion for the old and the young destitute….She is respected for her service towards another human being. Every evening we will find people from all walks of life come and pay homage to her, irrespective of religion and race.

“I am sharing the joy from our city through these few pictures which I am sending to you.”

Thank you, Sandy, for permitting us to “share the joy” as well.

Initially we were confused about Mother Teresa’s birthday, seeing it recorded elsewhere as August 27. We’ve since learned, “She always wrote her birthday as the 27th of August because that was the day of her baptism, which was always more important to her than her birth. “

After joining a religious order at age 18, Teresa was sent to Calcutta to teach. In 1948 the Catholic Church granted her request to leave the convent and work among the city’s poorest people. Teresa and some of her former pupils “found men,  women, and children dying on the streets who were rejected by local hospitals. The group rented a room so they could care for helpless people otherwise condemned to die in the gutter. In 1950, the group was established by the Church as a Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese” and named the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa, so far as we know, originated the phrase “a cheerful giver.” Charity alone won’t do; it needs to be provided with lightness, or as we suppose they’d say in Kolkota, JOY. In this spirit, Sandy writes to us, “Calcutta is a very human city, though it’s old, broken and dirty. But anyone who has come to Calcutta will like to come for the second time and the third time. Here we get so many opportunities to give a helping hand to another human being.”

Mother Teresa died September 5, 1993. Here are some photographs of her obsequies, flowers aplenty, by Pablo Bartholomew.

So happy birthday, Mother. We’ll close with spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy’s words of praise: Your life is the fragrance of the world-peace-dream-flower.