Saint Augustine

Virtue: Wisdom

Feast Day: 28th August

Augustine was born in North Africa in 354. His father was a pagan who wanted his son to be a man of learning and cared little about his character. His mother was St Monica, who urged her son to lead a good life.

Augustine fell into bad company and read bad books. For thirteen years, he led a very evil life. But his mother kept praying for his conversion. One day, while he was reading the letters of St. Paul, he made up his mind to become a Christian. His mother’s prayers were answered. He became a Christian at thirty-three, a priest at thirty-six, a bishop at forty-one. He preached often and wrote many books during thirty-five years as Bishop of Hippo in North Africa.

Augustine wrote: “Too late have I loved You, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You.”

St Augustine died in the year 430. He is honoured as a Doctor or Teacher of the Church and patron of theologians.

Saint Mother Teresa

Virtue: Charity

Feast Day: 5th September

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Teresa, was born on 26 August 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, to Albanian parents. Her father, a well-respected local businessman, died when she was eight years old, leaving her mother, a devoutly religious woman, to open an embroidery and cloth business to support the family. After spending her adolescence deeply involved in parish activities, Agnes left home in September 1928, for the Loreto Convent in Rathfarnam (Dublin), Ireland, where she was admitted as a postulant on October 12 and received the name of Teresa, after her patron, St. Therese of Lisieux.

Agnes was sent by the Loreto order to India and arrived in Calcutta on 6 January 1929. Upon her arrival, she joined the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling. She made her final profession as a Loreto nun on 24 May 1937, and thereafter was called Mother Teresa.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Mother Teresa expanded the work of the Missionaries of Charity both within Calcutta and throughout India. From the late 1960s until 1980, the Missionaries of Charity expanded both in their reach across the globe and in their number of members. Mother Teresa opened houses in Australia, the Middle East, and North America, and the first novitiate outside Calcutta in London. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By that same year, there were 158 Missionaries of Charity foundations.

After a summer of travelling to Rome, New York, and Washington, in a weak state of health, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta in July 1997. At 9:30 PM, on 5 September, Mother Teresa died at the Motherhouse. Her body was transferred to St Thomas's Church, next to the Loreto Convent, where she had first arrived nearly 69 years earlier. Hundreds of thousands of people from all classes and all religions, from India and abroad, paid their respects.

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