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Agnes Gonxhe (Albanian for rosebud-flower) Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, currently in Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Gonxhe was born to Albanian parents Drane and Nikola Bojaxhiu originally from Prizren in Kosovo who had moved to Scopje. The Albanian Catholic community of Scopje during the time of Mother Teresa was a minority. Catholics were outnumbered by the Eastern Orthodox majority and Muslims, which constituted the second largest religion. Scopje was made up of various ethnicities including Albanian, Croatian, Bosniaks, etc. Her peripheral native Skopje, exposed future Mother Teresa, at an early age, to people of different faiths, ethnicities, cultures and languages. The geographical periphery was also a political-imperial periphery. At the time that Gonxhe was born, Skopje was part of the Ottoman Empire. The current Balkan nations of Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia etc., did not exist at that time. Skopje was part of the administrative province of Kosovo, which was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire. The vilayet-division of the Ottoman society integrated within its administrative boundaries a diverse group of peoples and religions, which Mother Teresa knew first hand while growing up. Besides peripheral geography, Mother Teresa lived in society’s existential peripheries. She was only two years old when the devastating Balkan wars (1912-1913) broke out. Balkan wars marked the end of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans. What followed was the partition of the region among three countries: Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece. The land partition was followed by unspeakable human catastrophes, poverty, and massive violence. People fleeing their homes, expulsion, ethnic cleansing and displacement of entire villages, towns and families were events Mother Teresa witnessed first-hand. But there was more to come. During World War I, Macedonia became the fruit of discord between Serbia and Bulgaria. The life experience in the existential periphery, or “in the periphery of periphery” as the Western Balkans is referred to, prepared Mother Teresa to go to the peripheries and to make the peripheries in India her life’s mission.
Moreover, there were values of life in the periphery that Mother Teresa cherished and applied to her mission and to the other family she founded: the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa’s father, Nikolas Bojaxhiu, was a merchant who had traveled the world as far as Egypt. Nikolas was fluent in several languages and knowledgeable of cultures and traditions. Nikolas was also a great storyteller who amused his three children Age, Lazar and Gonxhe for hours. Mother Teresa’s mother, Drane Bojaxhiu, was a strong, hands-on and practical woman dedicated to her family and to her faith. When she was left a widow and penniless from her husband’s business partner, she managed extraordinarily to provide and raise her three children. The first training ground for Mother Teresa to love God and to serve her neighbor she learned from her mother Drane. Faith was a permanent feature of her family. Every evening Drane and her family prayed together. Though prayer life continued to define Drane, she was also merciful in action. As a single mother, she raised her family to never forget the poor, the abandoned, or the orphans. Mother Teresa wrote that “many poor in and around Scopje knew our house, and none left empty handed. We had guests at the table every day. At first I used to ask, ‘Who are they?’ and Mother would answer: ‘Some are relatives, but all of them are our people.’ When I was older, I realized that the strangers were poor people who had nothing and whom my mother was feeding.” Helping the poor actively and mercifully was a permanent feature of the Bojaxhiu family, “a training” Mother Teresa learned and applied to her own family. “My daughter, if you begin something, begin it wholeheartedly. Otherwise, don’t begin it at all” was the advice that Drane gave Mother Teresa when she decided to join the Loreto Sisters. Indeed, Mother Teresa served with joy and love in the peripheries, not only treating physical hunger, TB or leprosy among the poor, but also addressing the affluent people in the West who had a different kind of hunger and were dying for a little love. She provided that love generously, expecting nothing in return.
Mother Teresa is a saint of the peripheries and she will continue to be in the peripheries even after her canonization of September 4, as she herself said: “I will continually be absent from heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.” The periphery, both geographical and existential, is what Pope Francis and Mother Teresa have in common. Mother Teresa came from the geographical and existential peripheries and devoted her life to the geographical and existential peripheries of India. Pope Francis, who also came from the periphery, is vigorously bringing the periphery to the center. He is energizing the Church to go beyond her comfort zone and to embrace the periphery.
Watch Mother Teresa's Canonization LIVE from Rome on Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 3:30 am ET!
