Mother Teresa's lessons in love

The world has lost a truly universal figure with the passing of Mother Teresa, who won international respect -- and a Nobel Peace Prize -- through love and obstinacy in the slums of Calcutta. Everyone, from those she cared for in the poorest districts of her adopted country of India to the world's leaders, has hailed her as the greatest humanitarian of her time, a person who never refused to help any living being. She was frequently described as the nearest thing our age has known to a saint.

Love was the base on which Mother Teresa built. But it was tempered with a toughness that enabled her to spend most of her life in conditions that broke lesser people in months. In her later years, controversies swirled around her centers for the destitute and dying, with critics saying the emphasis should have been placed on helping people to live, rather than to die, with dignity. But Mother Teresa rode out the storm unmoved, explaining that her idea was simple. She had come to India to help, not to preach or to engage in politics. Born in Macedonia to Albanian parents in 1910, this grocer's daughter knew her vocation -- to serve people -- at the age of 12. She left home to pursue her goal in 1928.

In 1948 she received permission to found her own Missionaries of Charity. Today the order has hundreds of nuns, and its 86-year-old founder maintained, until recently, a hectic schedule that kept her constantly flying around the world, regularly calling on heads of state who often personally helped her cause. There are many people here who will recall the week in 1983 when she swept through Hong Kong like a caressing breeze, bringing comfort to the elderly whom she met.

Shakespeare told us there were sermons in stones. Mother Teresa carved her sermon of love on the hearts of millions of people. She will be missed by many more than her immediate followers.

-- The Hong Kong Standard