Three decades ago, a 5 foot tall Roman Catholic nun, in her early thirties, stepped among the crowded street people of Calcutta and scooped up an unconscious woman, lying on the filthy road, her body half wasted by feasting rats and maggots. The slight nun brought the helpless woman to her own flat, bathed her, and held her till the woman managed a smile of gratitude and died. That was the beginning of an extraordinary ministry to the world "poorest of the poor" which brought the Noble Prize for peace to Mother Teresa, who is the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity.

Born on August 26,1910 at Skopje, Yugoslavia to an Albanian grocer and his wife, she was baptised Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhier. At age 18 she joined the Irish Sisters of Loretto to become a missionary to India. For the next 20 years Sister Teresa taught affluent Indian girls at St. Mary’s school in Calcutta.

Responding to a second call from God and in 1948 she won the Vatican’s reluctant permission to leave her comfortable life at St. Mary’s , to start a new order of nuns devoted to the diseased and dying street dwellers of Calcutta. She promptly shed her shoes and adopted as her habit the rough cotton sari worn by the poorest Indian woman. Today, the Missionaries of Charity are comprised of 1,800 nuns and 1,200 co workers who maintain international network of hospitals, orphanages, schools and leprosariums. There are 93 branches of the Missionaries of Charity in India and 60 others around the world.

Despite their hard way of life or perhaps because of it the Missionaries of Charity are said to have to more applicants than any religious order. They are also prospering through gifts despite their strict vow of poverty. "God is my banker and He provides what I need at anytime", said Mother Teresa.

some years ago when I was a seminarian I met Mother Teresa in Calcutta. I was very much impressed with her prayer life and faith in God. One could see that her life, her words and deeds went hand in hand according to the will of God. She taught what she believed in: "to trust in God totally" and She encouraged every one to strengthen their prayer life. Mother Teresa once said: "what you can do I can not do, what I can do you can not do but together we can do something beautiful for God". Let us take her words seriously and together as a community of St. Peter’s church Barkur and the people of Barkur who are around the world continue to do something beautiful for God.