Mother Teresa - Life - Term Paper Example

mother theresa Mother Theresa was a hero in the truest sense of the word. An Albanian altruist who devoted her life to spreading the gospel of Christ and helping the poor in some of the most impoverished and underdeveloped regions of the world, Mother Theresa devoted her life to helping others. As a humanitarian who worked tirelessly to help the plight of the poor in India, the nun who became affectionately known as Mother Theresa courageously founded the Missionaries of Charity church in Calcutta, India, one of the poorest urban regions on the planet.

As the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work, Mother Theresa has left an important legacy of humanism and self-sacrifice after years working to better humanity (Clucas, 1998). Mother Theresa was first and foremost a Christian who believed in the spread of the Gospel and the eternal redemption of the poor through the word of Christ. She was a humanist who left her native Albania to tend to the sick, frail and the poor and established an international charitable organization which sought to administer to the sick and dying around the world.

Mother Theresa was known for her selflessness and the charitable nature of her life. Kindness and self-sacrifice were virtues that she lived by. Mother Theresa worked tirelessly to help others and based her life upon the compassionate teachings of Christ. A humanist in the truest sense, Mother Theresa tended to the poorest of the poor, irrespective of ethnic or racial differences. According to the Mother Theresa Center in Calcutta, India, Mother Theresa had the following to say about her worldview, “By blood, I am Albanian.

By citizenship, I am Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” (Mother Theresa Center, 2009). Internal characteristics which Mother Theresa came to embody included a universalism which was not often understood in the context of the middle of the 20th century, an eternal compassion for the suffering of others and a call to duty to spread the word of God through help and self-sacrifice. Although she committed herself to a life of self-sacrifice and poverty, Mother Theresa’s charities were international in scope and established throughout the world.

She worked with terminally ill patients and those inflicted with the scourge of leprosy in India while operating ministries in more than 100 countries by the late twentieth-century (Williams, 2002). Mother Theresa was a compassionate and caring woman who sought the betterment of the world through the alleviation of poverty and through the caring and compassion of her savior Jesus Christ. A real hero who worked each and every day to help the poor, sick and infirm, Mother Theresa displayed the qualities of heroism such as honesty, kindness and courage through her work.

She was rewarded for her tireless work on behalf of the world’s downtrodden through a Nobel Peace Prize as well as through honorary American citizenship, undertaken by a special act of Congress to recognize her worldly achievements. Fundamentally though, Mother Theresa was a world leader who worked passionately to help the forgotten members of our global society and this remains her important legacy in world affairs. References Clucas, J. G. (1988). Mother Teresa. New York. Chelsea House Publications.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta (1910-1997). (2009). Mother Theresa Center. Accessed October 10, 2009http://www.motherteresa.org/layout.html Williams, P. (2002). Mother Theresa. Indianapolis: Alpha Books.