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On this day in 1950, Mother Theresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in India.

Born in Albania, she left home at the age of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She never again saw her mother or sister. Soon she was working in India with the Sisters but at the age of 40, she had a spiritual experience calling her to leave the convent and devote her life to living among the poor and the sick.

The fourth vow of the Missionaries is to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”. Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2003, she was beatified as “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta”. She preached and showed the promotion of unconditional love, never doubting her vocation.

This poem by the Persian mystic poet, Rumi is about a time of vocation, It is Your Turn Now (translated by Sharam Shiva):

It is your turn now,
you waited, you were patient.
The time has come,
for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You’re a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now,
to be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities.

Today I offer part of the prayer of St Francis, that no doubt Mother Theresa repeated many times: “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.”

Photo credit: Túrelio (via Wikimedia-Commons), 1986