 |
The INVITATION ... an emperience in the Peace Dome |
|
The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates you meet in The INVITATION At the age of twelve, Mother Teresa, born in 1910 in Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, strongly felt the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen, she left her parental home and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. In 1948, she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. In1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, The Missionaries of Charity, whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. The Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI in 1965. |
Mother Teresa I never forget an opportunity I had in visiting a home where they had all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them in an institution and forgotten maybe. And I went there, and I saw in that home they had everything, beautiful things, but everybody was looking towards the door. And I did not see a single one with their smile on their face. And I turned to the Sister and I asked: How is that? How is it that the people they have everything here, why are they all looking towards the door, why are they not smiling? I am so used to see the smile on our people, even the dying one smile, and she said: This is nearly every day, they are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten, and see - this is where love comes. That poverty comes right there in our own home, even neglect to love. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried, and these are difficult days for everybody. Are we there, are we there to receive them, is the mother there to receive the child? I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given into drugs, and I tried to find out why - why is it like that, and the answer was: Because there is no one in the family to receive them. Father and mother are so busy they have no time. Young parents are in some institution and the child takes back to the street and gets involved in something. We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace. ©1979 The Nobel Foundation, reprinted with permission |
|
Ask how your school or organization can preform The Invitation. Email us at peace@som.org for details |
See the College of Metaphysics performance of
available on dvd |