Stained Glass Tour
  - Joseph the Patriarch
  - St. Therese of Liseux
  - St. Claire of Assisi
  - St. Francis of Assisi
  - St. Paul of Tarsus
  - Bl. Pedro Calungsod
  - St. Maria Goretti
  - Bl. Miguel Pro
  - St. Maximilian Kolbe
  - St. Gianna Molla
  - Bl. Teresa of Calcutta
  - Ven. John Paul II, Pope
  - St. John Vianney
  - Christ the King with St. Michael
the Archangel
 - Ven. Fr. Michael McGivney

The stained glass in the main section of St. Joseph's Church that is featured in this section was designed and created by parishioner Mary Mullins and all images are subject to copyright, 2007-2010, Valley Rose Designer Glass.  Descriptive text copyright Mary Mullins, 2007-2010.
You may contact them by calling (209) 238-3236.

“I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world.  For we are touching the Body of Christ twenty-four hours.  We have twenty-four hours in this presence, and so do you and I. You too try to bring that presence of God in your family, for the family that prays together stays together.”

Mother of Teresa of Calcutta spoke these words on December 11, 1979 when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.  This tiny woman, so in love with Jesus Christ and committed to doing His will, was seen as a living saint and one of the greatest humanitarians of our age.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910 in what was the Ottoman Empire, and later became Skopje, Macedonia.  She was an ethnic Albanian and her middle name, Gonxhe, means “Rosebud” in Albanian.  This was a very fitting name for our beloved Mother Teresa.  Her love for Jesus was rich in passion and commitment, a love often symbolized a rose and she was tiny in stature, like a little “bud”.
Mother Teresa was baptized on August 27, 1910, the day after she was born and she considered this date to be her true date of “birth”.  She was the youngest of three children born to Nicola and Drane Bojaxhiu.  Mother Teresa’s parish of the Sacred Heart was administered by the Jesuits and was very near to her home.  She and her family were very involved in parish life.  She received her First Holy Communion when she was five and a half years old and was confirmed when she was six.  This may seem quite an early age to us, but the graces of these beautiful Sacraments of Initiation found fruitful ground in Mother Teresa’s soul.  
 Her dear father Nichola died suddenly when she was just eight years old.   The death of her father left the family deeply wounded both emotionally and financially.  Her mother Drane, became mother and father and raised her three children with a deep sense of love for God and personal discipline.  
By the time she was twelve, Gonxhe knew God was calling her to consecrated religious life.  But as she said herself, she did not think too seriously about this vocation between the ages of twelve and eighteen. But when she turned eighteen, she knew it was time to leave home and family and follow Jesus.  She knew she was called to be a missionary and she knew she was meant to go to India. She entered the Sisters of Loreto in Rathfarnham, Ireland primarily to learn English. The Sisters had schools in India and taught their students in English.
In 1929, Gonxhe came to India and began her novitiate in Darjeeling near the mountains.  On May 24, 1931 she took her first religious vows and chose the name Teresa after St. Therese of Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries.  By the time she took her solemn vows on May 14, 1937, she was teaching in the Loreto Convent School in eastern Calcutta.
She loved teaching at the convent school and in 1944, she became the principal. But more and more, the life of the poor in Calcutta left a deep imprint on her heart. Every day, she saw horrendous living conditions for some people and this greatly distressed her.  Added to this, the famine in 1943 brought even more suffering and death. The escalation of hatred and violence between Hindus and Muslims in 1946 brought the terrible picture of life for the poor in Calcutta into ever sharper focus for Mother Teresa.  
Then on September 10, 1946, while on the train to the Loreto Convent in Darjeeling for her annual retreat, she received what she described as “the call within the call.”  She had a vivid, intense experience of Jesus in which He showed her His thirst for love and for souls and His distress that so many poor were neglected and did not know that He loved them.  Over the next few weeks, she received a series of visions and locutions in which the Lord told her to “Come, be My light, I cannot go alone.”  From that moment on, she knew that she had to leave the comfortable life of the convent and work with the poor; not just by helping them, but by living among them and by sharing God’s love with them.  She needed to love and serve Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.
For two years, Mother Teresa prayed and worked with her superiors to gain permission to establish the new religious order which would eventually be known as the Missionaries of Charity.  Finally on August 17, 1948, she left Loreto dressed in a simple white cotton sari edged in blue.  She first went to the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna to learn more about medical care and when she returned to Calcutta, she found temporary lodging with Little Sisters of the Poor.  These were not easy times for Mother Teresa. Nuns simply did not live outside of a religious community. Not everyone trusted her motives when she said it was her simple yet powerful desire to love Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.  It would have been very easy to return to the Loreto Convent, but she knew she was doing exactly what Jesus asked of her, and so she continued.  As she said, “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break faith.”
On December 21, 1948, Mother Teresa entered the slums with offering acts of love in the name of Jesus. She washed the sores the street people, cared for children, gave food to the hungry and did whatever she could to make the most wretched of God’s creatures feel loved.  
The weeks and months went by and she was joined by some of her former students and so her little community grew. On October 7, 1950, the Missionaries of Charity were officially recognized by the Archdiocese of Calcutta. Mother Teresa received criticism for her method of care from some quarters but she also received support and praise from others. Indian officials, including the Prime Minister, expressed their thanks to her. In 1952, with the help of some of these officials, she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into a free hospice for the poor which she called Nirmal Hriday, the Home for the Pure Heart. As she said herself, many of the destitute she picked up had lived “like animals on the street died like angels, loved and cared for” at Nirmal Hriday.
The Missionaries of Charity grew—no one could turn a blind eye to the good they did in the name of Jesus. In the 1960’s, Mother Teresa sent her sisters to other parts of India.  When Pope Paul VI granted the Missionaries of Charity “The Decree of Praise” she felt God was calling her to open a house in Venezuela.  Mother Teresa also established congregations for priests (Missionaries of Charity Brothers and Fathers) and also for lay people (Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, Sick and Suffering Co-Workers).  She welcomed anyone with a desire for a deep prayer life expressed in simplicity, sacrifice and humble acts of love.  
Mother Teresa received much attention from the media, but she always worked to keep the attention focused on Jesus. She was honored in both religious and secular quarters. She accepted accolades and awards with the simple phrase “For the glory of God and in the name of the poor.”  Despite the positive impact she had, she also had critics, most of whom were petty, looking to find fault with the slightest thing she did., even to complaining about how she cleaned hypodermic needles.  But she never lashed out, she simply kept focused on Jesus remembering the words of Scripture from John 15:18: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.” Mother Teresa often spoke of the holy virtue of joy and she encouraged her sisters to “Smile—Peace begins with a smile.”  
As one might expect, such an intense level of work is hard on the body. Mother Teresa suffered heart attacks and bouts of malaria over the years. By 1997, her health was in decline. But also in 1997, fifty years after she received “the call within the call”, the Missionaries of Charity now had 610 foundations including schools, hospices, homes and soup kitchens, in 123 countries worldwide and nearly 4,000 sisters. She was an advocate for the poor, the unborn, the dying, children, those with HIV/AIDS, families, mothers, and anyone in need.  In each of these people she saw and loved in them, the face of Jesus.  She wrote inspiring words to bring people closer to God and wrote to heads of state begging for a cessation of war.  
Mother Teresa commented frequently that the West did not suffer the brutalizing poverty that the Third World faced, but in the West, she saw a different kind of poverty, one where the human person was lonely, neglected and unwanted, from unborn babies, to children left to their own devices because parents were too focused on careers, to the elderly people forgotten in nursing homes.  She encouraged families to make time for one another and realize that the “poor” were often those starved for love amongst their own children, spouses, and parents.
In March 1997, Mother Teresa stepped down as the leader of the Missionaries of Charity and blessed her successor, Sister Nirmala.  Already, she was seen by Christians, Hindus and Muslims, as a “living saint.” She died on September 5, 1997 and received a state funeral from the Indian government. She was laid to rest at the Mother House of Missionaries of Charity.  
Pope John Paul II regarded Mother Teresa as a very special witness to the Love of God and one who transcended the national and religious borders. He referred to her as “a sister of God”. Saddened by her death, he said “She’s left us all a little orphaned.”  Knowing first hand of her holiness and knowing of reports of favors being obtained through her intercession, he opened the Cause for Canonization less than two years after her death.
After her death, as investigations into her life began as part of the Cause for Canonization, the private writings of Mother Teresa came to light. To the surprise of many, her writings showed that she spiritual darkness for nearly fifty years.  She knew no consolations from God, but instead kept Him company in his hours of desolation in the Garden of Gethsemane.  She did not complain, she knew the Lord called her to “Come, be My light.”   Pope John Paul II said of her: “Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face and His Sacred Heart.”  
In Rome, on October 19, 2003, Pope John Paul II joyfully beatified his friend, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

In this window…
Mother Teresa tenderly holds a baby girl in her arms.  The child is very thin, but contentedly sleeping resting her head near Mother’s heart.  Over her shoulder is one part of the dome top of the abandoned Hindu temple which became her first hospice for the dying, Nirmal Hriday.   The words of Jesus at His crucifixion, “I thirst” are emblazoned on the building just beneath the Cross on the temple façade.
Mother Teresa is standing on some steps. At her feet, a poor, homeless man dressed in jeans and an old shirt sits with a begging sign and his hat up turned to receive some coins.  One of his legs is wrapped in a dirty bandage. This man, who could easily be seen on the streets of Modesto, represents Jesus in the “distressing disguise of the poor.”  The wounds Jesus suffered on the Cross are clearly visible in the man’s hands and feet. Like many poor people, he does not look directly at us when asking for help.  
A little green vine winds its way from the poor man’s shoulder to Mother Teresa’s sari.  This little vine represents the fact that she was a faithful, fruitful vine connected to the branch of the Lord.  
Just above the vine, train tracks curve around the mountains.  These represent Mother Teresa’s “call within the call” that she received on September 10, 1946 as she traveled on the train from Calcutta to Darjeeling.