A very few times in our lives, we come across people who are extraordinary. They stand out because of their seemingly great power of will, unusual abilities, influence, and charisma. Extraordinary people are ordinary people who choose to live their passions, and the only thing that sets them apart is the choice to do so. That choice is not just a wish, a dream, or a hope – it’s a commitment. In being committed to their passions, these people’s lives become bigger, more meaningful, more powerful than average lives. Yet it’s so simple to make that choice, and so simple to live it. If we do not spend our lives doing what we love, for what have we lived?
Among them are people who have a specific passion – a passion for compassion. In fact, most people who are compassionate seem extraordinary simply because they are so rare. Most people put aside the idea of compassion because it is seen as impractical; compassion won’t bring us security, and we may not gain any recognition or prestige from it, so we reject it as a life path. Our culture does not teach us how to engage in compassionate action, But when we learn to do so, we may find the joy that otherwise we could spend a lifetime trying to find. Success isn’t about how life looks, but how it feels.
On this page the biographies of notable but ordinary people, some of whom you may already have heard about, and others who may not be familiar to you. Their stories demonstrate that it is entirely possible and logical to engage in a life of total compassion. These people are not doing what they do for the sake of personal recognition, but because it is the right thing to do regardless of any other factors, and they are demonstrating by the lives they lead that anyone can do what they do.
The people I’ll be writing about here are ordinary people, some of whom are with us and some of whom have passed, who felt passionate about, and chose to live fully in, compassion. These are people whose souls were set afire by some event or some insight that made them put aside security and prestige, accomplishment and fortune, normalcy and acceptance, to dedicate their lives to something bigger than themselves. May these stories inspire you.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
Mother Teresa is perhaps the best known compassionate worker of recent times. She spent her entire adult life in compassionate service to the desperately poor, and left a legacy that continues her work. Although a rash of Facebook posts have defamed her, we must consider the veracity of that source, and realize that the truth is in the life she led.
She was born Gonxha Agnes on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, Serbia. Her father died when she was eight years old, and her family lived in financial difficulty thereafter. At the age of eighteen, Gonxha joined the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. She took the name Mary Teresa, and in 1929 went to live at their convent in Calcutta, India, where she taught at St. Mary’s School. In 1944 she became the school’s principal.
The convent and school were housed in a comfortable building sequestered on a well-kept property, but during forays into the city, Sister Teresa could not help but notice the suffering of the homeless, hungry, and sick people on the streets of Calcutta. She was disturbed by the contrast between the comfortable life of the convent and the suffering so rampant just outside the convent.
Requests to her order to address the needs of the very poor in Calcutta went unheeded, as the facility was specifically only a Catholic school. In time Sister Teresa decided to leave the order and establish a separate religious community, dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor, “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.” She obtained permission from the Vatican to start her new order, and named it Missionaries of Charity.
Although she had no funds, she began by starting an open-air school for Calcutta’s slum children. She was joined by volunteers and her former students, and received gifts of financial support. Over time Mother Teresa and her Sisters were able expand their scope of care to shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, refugees and AIDS sufferers. They opened hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools, and began to do relief work after natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famines.
In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. “A beautiful death,” she said, “is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted.”
Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those suffering from leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food.
As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children’s Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.
In the 1960s, Mother Teresa began to send her Sisters out to other parts of India, and then to Venezuela, Italy, Tanzania, Albania, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. By 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered nearly 4,000 and were established in 123 countries around the world.
Mother Teresa later founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. There are over one million lay (not members of religious orders) co-workers in more than 40 countries.
Mother Teresa was a seemingly fearless person. In 1982, at the height of the Siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she traveled through the war zone to the devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients.
She was often faced with vehement criticism, her detractors claiming that her motives were for personal recognition, that her hospitals were substandard, that she didn’t spend donated money well, and so on. Undaunted, she responded by saying, “No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.”
She received the Indian Padmashri Award, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, India’s highest civilian honor the Bharat Ratna, the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize, the Philippines-based Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding, and the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. She was appointed an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia. The United Kingdom gave her the Order of Merit, and the United States granted honorary citizenship. Albania granted her the Golden Honour of the Nation. Other civilian awards include the Balzan Prize, the Albert Schweitzer International Prize, the Pacem in Terris Award, the Templeton and Magsaysay awards, and the Nobel Peace Prize (1979).
Despite these awards, she didn’t do her work for recognition, and was humble in accepting them. She saw such recognition merely as a way to further her cause. When she received the Nobel Peace Prize, she refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and asked that the $192,000 funds be given to the poor in India.
Little known to those around her, Mother Teresa suffered from a pervading feeling that her God had abandoned her. But she continued to do her work, convinced that it was the right thing to do regardless of her perceived spiritual status, and feeling that regardless of whether God had abandoned her, she would not abandon those who needed her. She felt that compassionate action was essential no matter where she stood in God’s eyes. This is, I believe, the essence of her effectiveness – that she separated her religious convictions, the dogma of her religion, and her own spiritual struggles from her conviction that her help was needed in the world. The idea that one must be religious or must have a certain set of beliefs in order to good in the world keeps many people from compassionate work. Mother Teresa forged ahead in spite of and aside from her personal belief system.
Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack in 1983, and again in 1989, after which she received an artificial pacemaker. In 1996 she had more heart surgery. Amazingly, she was criticized for going to the United States for surgery instead of staying at one of her own hospitals in India. On September 5, 1997 Mother Teresa passed away. Since her death, the Catholic Church has been considering her for canonization as a saint.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
Mother Teresa
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.
Mother Teresa
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
Mother Teresa
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa
Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
Mother Teresa
God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.
Mother Teresa
Good works are links that form a chain of love.
Mother Teresa
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
Mother Teresa
I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.
Mother Teresa
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa
I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
Mother Teresa
I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa
If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
Mother Teresa
Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
Mother Teresa
It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
Mother Teresa
It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
Mother Teresa
It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.
Mother Teresa
It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.
Mother Teresa
Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.
Mother Teresa
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Mother Teresa
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Teresa
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Teresa
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
Mother Teresa
Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
Mother Teresa
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.
Mother Teresa
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Mother Teresa
Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
Mother Teresa
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
Mother Teresa
Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa
Peace begins with a smile.
Mother Teresa
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
Mother Teresa
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Mother Teresa
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
Mother Teresa
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa
The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.
Mother Teresa
The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.
Mother Teresa
The success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.
Mother Teresa
There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
Mother Teresa
There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa
There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
Mother Teresa
There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.
Mother Teresa
We are all pencils in the hand of God.
Mother Teresa
We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
Mother Teresa
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa
We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Mother Teresa
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
Mother Teresa
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Mother Teresa
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Mother Teresa
Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Mother Teresa
Soul of Compassion 