MEMORIAL OF SAINT MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA (KOLKATA), RELIGIOUS; SAINT BERTIN, RELIGIOUS AND SAINT LAWRENCE JUSTINIAN, BISHOP ~ FEAST DAY: SEPTEMBER 5TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata), Religious; Saint Bertin, Religious and Saint Lawrence Justinian, Bishop. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for the poor, the needy and those who are marginalized and suffering in situations of conflict. We pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed, for all widows and widowers and all those who mourn. For peace, love, and unity in our marriages, our families and our world. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, the Bishops, the Clergy, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world.🙏
SAINT MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA (KOLKATA), RELIGIOUS: St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997), known simply as Mother Teresa, a religious nun and the founder of the religious order of the Missionaries of Charity. A universal symbol of God’s merciful and preferential love for the poor and forgotten. Small of stature, rocklike in faith, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. St. Mother Teresa, luminous messenger of God’s love was born Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, city situated at the crossroads of Balkan history. The youngest of three children born to Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu, a family of Albanian descent in what is now Macedonia. She was baptised Gonxha Agnes, received her First Communion at the age of five and a half and was confirmed in November 1916. From the day of her First Holy Communion, a love for souls was within her. Her father’s sudden death when Mother Teresa was about eight years old left the family in financial straits. Her mother, Drane raised her children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s character and vocation. She attended a youth group called Sodality, run by a Jesuit priest at her parish of the Sacred Heart, and her involvement opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun. As a young girl Mother Teresa was fascinated by stories she heard of missionaries serving in India. By age 12 she discerned a vocation to the religious life, and at the age of 18, she left her home in September 1928 to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Dublin Ireland as a missionary to India. In the convent, Agnes (Mother Teresa) chose her religious name in honor of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries. But another nun had already chosen that name, so Agnes became Teresa, spelling the name in the Spanish style. After learning the rule of her Order and basic English, she sailed on the long voyage to India in December, arriving in Calcutta in January 6, 1929. India would be her home for the rest of her life. After making her First Profession of Vows in May 1931, Sister Teresa was assigned to the Loreto Entally community in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary’s School for girls. On May 24, 1937, Sister Teresa made her Final Profession of Vows, becoming, as she said, the “spouse of Jesus” for “all eternity.” From that time on she was called Mother Teresa. She continued teaching at St. Mary’s and in 1944 became the school’s principal. A person of profound prayer and deep love for her religious sisters and her students, Mother Teresa’s twenty years in Loreto were filled with profound happiness. Noted for her charity, unselfishness and courage, her capacity for hard work and a natural talent for organization, she lived out her consecration to Jesus, in the midst of her companions, with fidelity and joy. She enjoyed her work, but became increasingly disturbed by the extreme poverty and societal unrest she observed around her.
On September 10, 1946 during the train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Mother Teresa received her “inspiration,” her “call within a call.” What she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and work and live among the poor. At this point she did not know that she was to found an order of nuns, or even exactly where she was to serve. “I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there,” she said once, recalling the moment on the train. On that day, in a way she would never explain, Jesus’ thirst for love and for souls took hold of her heart and the desire to satiate His thirst became the driving force of her life. Over the course of the next weeks and months, by means of interior locutions and visions, Jesus revealed to her the desire of His heart for “victims of love” who would “radiate His love on souls.” “Come be My light,” He begged her. “I cannot go alone.” He revealed His pain at the neglect of the poor, His sorrow at their ignorance of Him and His longing for their love. He asked Mother Teresa to establish a religious community, Missionaries of Charity, dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor. Nearly two years of testing and discernment passed before Mother Teresa received permission to begin. On August 17, 1948, she dressed for the first time in a white, blue-bordered sari and passed through the gates of her beloved Loreto convent to enter the world of the poor. After a short course with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta and found temporary lodging with the Little Sisters of the Poor. She began her own religious order in Calcutta dedicated to ministering to, in her words, “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” On December 21 she went for the first time to the slums. She visited families, washed the sores of some children, cared for an old man lying sick on the road and nursed a woman dying of hunger and TB. She started each day in communion with Jesus in the Eucharist and then went out, rosary in her hand, to find and serve Him in “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.” After some months, she was joined, one by one, by her former students and together they took in men, women, and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets and cared for them. Despite facing many challenges, doubts and disagreements, both from within and outside the Church, St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) began seeing several impacts and successes, as there were others who followed her examples, and soon, it became the foundation of the Missionaries of Charity. And despite the challenges and trials that St. Teresa of Kolkata and her fellow sisters had to face, she continued to dedicate herself to the Lord and her mission tirelessly.
On October 7, 1950 the new congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was officially established in the Archdiocese of Calcutta. By the early 1960s, Mother Teresa began to send her Sisters to other parts of India. The Decree of Praise granted to the Congregation by Pope Paul VI in February 1965 encouraged her to open a house in Venezuela. It was soon followed by foundations in Rome and Tanzania and, eventually, on every continent. Starting in 1980 and continuing through the 1990s, Mother Teresa opened houses in almost all of the communist countries, including the former Soviet Union, Albania and Cuba. In order to respond better to both the physical and spiritual needs of the poor, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963, in 1976 the contemplative branch of the Sisters, in 1979 the Contemplative Brothers, and in 1984 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers. Yet her inspiration was not limited to those with religious vocations. She formed the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa and the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, people of many faiths and nationalities with whom she shared her spirit of prayer, simplicity, sacrifice and her apostolate of humble works of love. This spirit later inspired the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In answer to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests as a “little way of holiness” for those who desire to share in her charism and spirit. During the years of rapid growth, the world began to turn its eyes towards Mother Teresa and the work she had started. Numerous awards, beginning with the Indian Padmashri Award in 1962 and notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, honoured her work, while an increasingly interested media began to follow her activities. She received both prizes and attention “for the glory of God and in the name of the poor.” The whole of Mother Teresa’s life and labour bore witness to the joy of loving, the greatness and dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully and with love, and the surpassing worth of friendship with God. But there was another heroic side of this great woman that was revealed only after her death. Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, was her interior life marked by an experience of a deep, painful and abiding feeling of being separated from God, even rejected by Him, along with an ever-increasing longing for His love. She called her inner experience, “the darkness.” The “painful night” of her soul, which began around the time she started her work for the poor and continued to the end of her life, led Mother Teresa to an ever more profound union with God. Through the darkness, she mystically participated in the thirst of Jesus, in His painful and burning longing for love, and she shared in the interior desolation of the poor. She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying: “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God’s love.”
During the last years of her life, despite increasingly severe health problems, Mother Teresa continued to govern her Society and respond to the needs of the poor and the Church. By 1997, Mother Teresa’s Sisters numbered nearly 4,000 members and were established in 610 foundations in 123 countries of the world. In March 1997 she blessed her newly-elected successor as Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity and then made one more trip abroad. After meeting Pope John Paul II for the last time, she returned to Calcutta and spent her final weeks receiving visitors and instructing her Sisters. On September 5, 1997 Mother Teresa’s earthly life came to an end. She was given the honour of a state funeral by the Government of India and her body was buried in the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity. Her tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage and prayer for people of all faiths, rich and poor alike. Mother Teresa left a testament of unshakable faith, invincible hope and extraordinary charity. Her response to Jesus’ plea, “Come be My light,” made her a Missionary of Charity, a “mother to the poor,” a symbol of compassion to the world, and a living witness to the thirsting love of God. She received the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize for her inspiring work with social outcasts. Less than two years after her death, in view of Mother Teresa’s widespread reputation of holiness and the favours being reported, Pope John Paul II permitted the opening of her Cause of Canonization. On December 20, 2002, he approved the decrees of her heroic virtues and miracles. St. Mother Teresa was Beatified on October 19, 2003 and Canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016. St. Mother Teresa is the Patron Saint of World Youth Day, Missionaries of Charity, Archdiocese of Calcutta (co-patron). Her feast day is September 5th.
QUOTES OF SAINT MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA (KOLKATA): ☆Mother Teresa once said, “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.” ☆She also said, “give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.” ☆”By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an 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.” ☆”God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be His love and His compassion to the poor.” She was a soul filled with the light of Christ, on fire with love for Him and burning with one desire: “to quench His thirst for love and for souls.”
PRAYER: Saint Mother Teresa, your generosity to the poor and destitute inspired millions. Your life of dedication to prayer, to the Church, and to the dignity of all life inspires us still. May we emulate your life of total service and total love by loving God first… Amen 🙏
SAINT BERTIN, RELIGIOUS: St. Bertin (c. 615 – c. 709 AD), also known as Saint Bertin the Great, was the Frankish abbot of a monastery in Saint-Omer later named the Abbey of Saint Bertin after him. St. Bertin was born about the beginning of the 7th century near Constance, France, and received his religious formation at the Abbey of Luxeuil, at that time the model abbey for the rather strict Rule of St. Columban. About 639, together with two other monks, he joined St. Omer, Bishop of Thérouanne, who had for two years been evangelizing the pagan Morini in the low-lying marshy country of the Pas-de-Calais. In this almost totally idolatrous region, these holy missionary monks founded a monastery that came to be called St. Mommolin after its first Abbot. After eight more arduous years of preaching the faith for Christ, they founded a second monastery at Sithiu dedicated to St. Peter. St. Bertin ruled it for nearly sixty years and made it famous; accordingly, after his death it was called St. Bertin and gave birth to the town of St. Omer.
St. Bertin practiced the greatest austerities and was in constant communion with God. He also traveled much and trained disciples who went forth to preach the faith to others. Among others, he selected St. Winnoc to found a monastery at Wormhoundt, near Dunkirk, and this Saint figures in many medieval English calendars. St. Bertin’s monastery served as an example to the locals, and brought many to the faith; 22 of its monks have been canonized. During a life that spanned nearly a century, St. Bertin was known for holiness and severe self-imposed austerities. On his death, the monastery was re-dedicated to him. About the year 698, this zealous preacher of Christ died, surrounded by his monks.
PRAYER: God, You built up Your Church by means of the religious zeal and apostolic care of St. Bertin. Grant by his intercession that she may ever experience a new increase of faith and holiness. Amen. Saint Bertin, Religious ~ Pray for us 🙏
SAINT LAWRENCE JUSTINIAN, BISHOP: St. Lawrence (also spelled Laurence), (1381-1455), Bishop and first Patriarch of Venice, was born on July 1, 1381, at Venice, Italy, Venetian nobility; his ancestors had fled Constantinople for political reasons. He was a descendant of the Giustiniani, a Venetian patrician family which numbered several saints among its members. St. Lawrence’s pious mother sowed the seeds of a devout religious life in the boy’s youth. From his childhood, he longed to be a Saint, and when he was nineteen years of age he was given a vision of the Eternal Wisdom, in the form of a beautiful and noble Lady who told him to seek the only repose he would ever know in Her, the Eternal Wisdom of God. All earthly things paled in his eyes before the ineffable beauty of this sight, and as it faded away a void was left in his heart which none but God could fill. Against his widowed mother‘s wishes, he chose against marriage and for the religious life. Refusing the offer of a brilliant marriage, at the age of nineteen he fled from his home in Venice and in 1400 joined the Augustinian Order of the Canons of St. George (canon regular at San Giorgio) Alga, Italy, a little Island, one mile from Venice where his uncle was a priest. Spent his days wandering the island, begging for the poor. Ordained a priest in 1406. When Lawrence first entered religion, a nobleman went to dissuade him from the folly of thus sacrificing every earthly prospect. The young monk listened patiently to his friend’s affectionate appeal, which soon changed into scorn and violent abuse. Calmly and kindly he then replied. He pointed out the shortness of life, the uncertainty of earthly happiness, and the incomparable superiority of the prize he sought, to any pleasures his friend had named. The latter could make no answer; he felt in truth that Lawrence was wise, and he himself was the fool. And he too left the world, became a fellow-novice with the Saint, and eventually died a holy death. As a monk, the mortification of Saint Lawrence was exemplary; he never drank outside of meals, and when urged to do so replied: If we cannot endure a little heat on earth, how will we bear that of Purgatory? He underwent two painful operations without saying any word except the holy name of Jesus. Before the second intervention, when the surgeon’s hand trembled, he said, Cut with vigor; your instrument cannot match the iron hooks used to tear the sides of the martyrs.
St. Lawrence was a noted preacher and teacher of the faith. Held assorted administrative positions within his Order. Elected Superior and General of his Order, Saint Lawrence strengthened his brethren. Humility keeps silent and does not become inflated in prosperity, whereas in adversity it is elevated, magnanimous, full of joy and an invincible courage. Few know what this virtue is; it is possessed only by those to whom God has given it by infusion, as a reward for their persevering efforts and their spirit of prayer. He encouraged frequent Communion, saying that the person who does not strive to become united with Him as frequently as possible has very little love for Jesus Christ. When he was consecrated bishop of his diocese in 1433, He tried to refuse the dignity, but Pope Eugene IV obliged him to accept it. In the face of slander and insult he thoroughly reformed his see. He founded fifteen monasteries and many churches, and his cathedral became a model for all of Christendom. His door was never closed to the poor, but he himself lived like a poor monk. His zeal led to his being appointed the first Patriarch of Venice, but he remained in heart and soul a humble priest, thirsting for the vision reserved for heaven. He tried to foster the religious life by his sermons as well as by his writings. The Diocese of Castello belonged to the Patriarchate of Grado. On 8 October, 1451, Nicholas V united the See of Castello with the Patriarchate of Grado, and the see of the patriarch was transferred to Venice, and Lawrence was named the first Patriarch of Venice, and exercised his office till his death somewhat more than four years later. His beatification was ratified by Clement VII in 1524, and he was canonized in 1690 by Alexander VIII. Innocent XII appointed 5 September for the celebration of his feast. The saint’s ascetical writings have often been published, first in Brescia in 1506, later in Paris in 1524, and in Basle in 1560, etc. We are indebted to his nephew, Bernardo Giustiniani, for his biography. He had just finished writing his last work, The Degrees of Perfection, when finally the eternal day began to dawn. Are you preparing a bed of feathers for me? he said. No, my Lord was stretched on a hard and painful tree. Laid upon straw, he exclaimed in rapture, Good Jesus, behold, I come. St. Lawrence died on January 8, 1455 at the age of seventy-four at Venice, Italy of natural causes. He was Beatified in 1524, Rome, Papal States by Pope Clement VII and Canonized on October 16, 1690, Rome, Papal States by Pope Alexander VIII. Innocent XII appointed 5 September for the celebration of his feast. Noted writer on mystical contemplation. Had the gift of prophecy. Miracle worker. He’s the Patron Saint of Venice, Italy.
Saint Lawrence Justinian, Bishop ~ Pray for us 🙏