Published 10.02.1998
Last week two amazing, fairy-tale-like lives came to an end and the world joined in a common mourning. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were worlds apart in their lifestyles and backgrounds. One was royalty, rich, regal, and romantic. The other was a poor commoner, sacrificial, serving, and self denying. But they both seemed to share a compassion for the distressed, the outcast, the disadvantaged. And it is this for which the world most remembers them. They were both mothers – one to the two princes, the other to thousands of poor children. Their work, and that of a third royal lady, demonstrated that a true conviction is always accompanied by action and that love in action is true service.
Lady Diana Spencer was a kindergarten teacher of aristocratic birth, The announcement that she would marry Prince Charles, being twelve years his junior, set off a media blitzkrieg and was cause for national celebration.
She was the perfect choice for the prince it seemed – a virginal young Protestant of suitable pedigree and a spotless past–someone who could endure the scrutiny of the media to which she would certainly be subjected. Diana was the unsophisticated, “inexperienced,” and malleable daughter of one of Queen Elizabeth’s oldest friends–the Earl of Spencer. On July 29, 1981, before 2,650 guests and a worldwide television audience of 750 million spectators, the new shining hope of the people, rode to St. Paul’s Cathedral in a glass coach for the wedding of the century; its fanfare and pageantry probably will never be matched by any other extravaganza, royal or otherwise.
In the next fifteen years, the lovely fairy tale turned into a sordid soap opera, and the marriage ended in an ugly divorce in July of 1996. An agreement was struck whereby, though technically-speaking Diana would no longer be a member of the royal family, she was to remain Diana, Princess of Wales, and to continue to enjoy some royal perks.
Diana received a $26-million settlement in the divorce and remained the favorite “rose” of the populace. A fanatical press documented accounts of her elbow-rubbing with the world’s elite on trips abroad, her reputed romances, her many charitable endeavors (a charity auction of her Charles-era evening clothes netted $3.25 million), and her activist urgings (she tirelessly lobbied for a worldwide ban on the manufacture and sale of landmines).
Last week Diana and her new beau, millionaire movie producer Dodi Fayed, were killed when the car in which they were attempting to evade paparazzi crashed into the wall of a Paris traffic tunnel at about 100 miles per hour. Her tragic death plunged a shocked world into grief, tinged with fury at the press. Her moving funeral like a return to the fairy tale. Mostly the world paid tribute to her humanitarian service.
Mother Teresa was Albanian by birth; her original name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. In 1948, Mother Teresa became a citizen of India. At the age of 18, she attended the religious Order called Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland. She received her spiritual training in Dublin, Ireland and Darjeeling, India. In 1931, she took the name of Teresa from the French nun Thérèse Martin, who was canonized in 1927 with the title St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
In 1937, Mother Teresa took her vows and taught for 20 years in Saint Mary’s High School in Calcutta, India. On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa received another call from God to serve the poorest of the poor who live in the streets.
In 1948, Pope Pious XII granted Mother Teresa permission to leave her duties as an independent nun, and she began to share her life with the poor, the sick and the hungry of Calcutta. Mother Teresa established an order called “Missionaries of Charity”. Her initial work consisted of teaching the children of the streets how to read.
In 1950, Mother Teresa began to care for lepers. In 1965, Pope Paul VI put the Missionaries of Charity under the control of the Papacy and gave authorization to Mother Teresa to expand her Order to other countries. Centers have opened almost everywhere around the world to assist lepers, the elderly, the blind, and people living with AIDS. Mother Teresa also opened schools and homes for the poor and abandoned children.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 over her own objections, but she accepted it on behalf of the “poorest of the poor”.
Marion Mill was born in a fairy tale royal palace in Hungary. Her first spoon was solid gold. They sent her to school in Vienna where she became an actress, and there she met and fell in love with a young medical student named Otto.
Otto and Marion married and went to live in Hollywood, CA. There, as they “set up house”, he began to dabble in movies. He became so interested in movies and in directing movies that he gave up his medical practice, and went on to become the internationally famed movie director Otto Preminger. Marion’s beauty, wit, and irresistible charm brought her everything a woman desires. In Europe, New York and Hollywood she became a famous international hostess.
But Otto’s princess could not handle the fast life of Hollywood. She went into alcohol, drugs and numerous affairs. Her life and life-style become so sordid, even for Hollywood, that Otto Preminger divorced Marion. She tried to take her own life three times, unsuccessfully, and finally moved back to Vienna.
There at a party she met another doctor, named Albert Schweitzer, the well known medical doctor, musician, philosopher, theologian and missionary, Schweitzer was home on leave from his hospital in Lambarene, Africa.
She was so fascinated by Schweitzer, that she asked him if she could talk to him alone, and he permitted that. For almost six months, every week, she met with Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At the end of that time he was going to go back to Africa, and she begged him let her go with him. Schweitzer surprised everyone by agreeing. Marion, the young princess, who was born in a palace went to a little village in Lambarene, Africa, and spent the rest of her life emptying bed pans and tearing up sheets to make bandages for putrid sores on the poverty stricken nationals.
She wrote her autobiography. I love the title of it – All I Want is Everything“. When she died, Time Magazine quoted from her autobiography these words: “‘Albert Schweitzer says there are two kinds of people. There are the helpers, and the non-helpers. I thank God He allowed me to become a helper, and in helping, I found everything’”.
Mark 10: 42-45
But Jesus called them (Disciples) to Himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant . And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
