Is mother Teresa a Saint: Her Images and Narratives - Essay Example

From her mother’s teachings, "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," she knew that the poor and impoverished were God’s creation and required paramount care (Leonard & Walker, N.p). Moreover, Mother Teresa schooled at a primary school run by the covenant before joining a secondary school that was state-run. As a young girl, she often sang solos in the local Sacred Heart choir and received a religious calling at 12. She took sometime thinking over the call and finally left for Ireland in 1928 to join Loreto Sisters of Dublin at only 18 years.

In 1929, she traveled to India for the novitiate and professed vows as a nun before being sent to Calcutta as a nun to teach the city’s pitiable families. In 1937, 24th March, she took vows to a life of submission, chastity, and poverty and took the title ‘mother’. In one of her prayers, she wrote, "Give me the strength to be ever the light of their lives, so that I may lead them at last to you," a flawless indication that she was committed to leading her students to Christ through her bigheartedness, benevolence, and commitment to their education (Leonard & Walker, N.p). In 1946, Mother Teresa received a second call from Christ requiring her to abandon teaching and start working in the purlieus of Calcutta as a way of indicating God’s love towards the sick, poor, and dying little children (Jones, 98).

She obeyed God’s calling and undertook basic medical training for 6 months before voyaging into the shantytowns of Calcutta to support the loathed, the uncared for and the unwanted. In the slums, she established a home for the fading destitute and an open-air school, both in dilapidated buildings but strived to provide basic services that transformed the city’s population. Mother Teresa’s blue and white sari and her organizations have largely been heroified and emotionalized as ‘saintly’ by the media thus largely making her immune to criticisms. This