The First Call

Agnes spent most of her time in the Legion of Mary where she helped a Father to teach catechism and read a lot about Slovenian and Croatian missionaries in India. At the age 12, she felt a desire to spend her life for God's work, to give to Him and let Him decide. Agnes prayed a lot over this and talked to her family and the Father about it. The Father told her that if she felt happy helping Him then it meant that, she had a call "the deep inner joy that you feel is the compass that indicates your direction of life," she was told. In 1928, she left for the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland. She was 18 then. She learned to speak English and was trained in religious life. She received the clothes of a Sister and chose the name Teresa from Saint Lisieux, the patron saint of foreign missionaries. In the beginning of 1929, they reached Colombo, then Madras and finally in Calcutta. On May 23, 1929, she was accepted as a novice and 2 years later, she made her first vow. Immediately after that she was send to Bengali to help the sisters in a little hospital with the care for the sick, starving and helpless mothers. She was touched by the endless misery there.

She was sent to Calcutta to study to become a teacher. When her study was finished, she was named to be teacher. The first work was to clean the classroom. Immediately, the children learned to love her for her enthusiasm and her tenderness.

On May 24 ,1937, she made her final vows in Darjeeling, India. She was a principal of a Roman Catholic High School in Kolkata, and was moved by the sick and dying on the city's streets. The great charity that spoke through her mothers letters, reminded her of the call: to care and serve for the poor.

The Legion of Mary was also active in this school. With the girls, Sister Teresa goes regularly to the hospitals, the slums, the poor. They did not only pray. They talked seriously about what they saw and what they did. Father Henry directed Sister Teresa for years. Under his inspiration, the desire grew to do more for the poor.