Pope Francis announced this month that Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who received the Nobel Peace Prize for spending her life serving the needy in Calcutta and around the world, will soon be canonized as a saint. The lately-departed nun –who died in 1997 at the age of 87- is set to complete the canonization process much more quickly than is typical. For the many she helped, and the many more she inspired, her impending sainthood stands as a reminder of the incredible legacy one contemporary person can have. Although in some ways, the humble, elderly and controversial Teresa seemed to be ripped from the pages of the Bible or church history, she addressed the turning millennium with old-school conviction and poise. It’s incredible to realize that the woman who, not all that long ago said, “Peace begins with a smile,” and smiled for the cameras, will soon be enshrined alongside saints from across the ages, smiling down forever. If that doesn’t make you feel old…

It seems that Mother Teresa touched our lives simply by existing in our era, living proof that goodness hadn’t died out. For me, at least, this was the case. Despite my Protestant status, nuns have long been my heroes. My parents told me the stories of such notable people as Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Russian Orthodox nun who volunteered to die in a Nazi gas chamber to save another prisoner’s life, and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, who although not a nun, served in alongside them in wartime hospitals. Later, the poetry of German Abbess Hildegard von Bingen became like a peek into Heaven for me. However, Mother Teresa held a lasting fascination with me. In elementary school, I would read and reread her chapter in The Children’s Book of Virtues and pretend to rescue orphans off the streets of Calcutta. I even dressed up in a homemade version of her sari habit.

I think the reason that Mother Teresa has meant a lot to a lot of people, including me, is that she addressed suffering in a strikingly humane way. “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody,” she aptly observed. Beyond recognizing the real needs of the human heart, she also attended to them to the best of her ability. If you were homeless, or had Hansen’s disease, or had been otherwise scraped to the margins of society, Mother Teresa and her sisters would offer their humble assistance – not with grand-scale plans to reverse the ills of the city and the world, but with practical attention to the urgent cares of this life. She did what really needed doing – airing out sick rooms, bathing children, dressing sores, reading to dying people from the holy book of each individual’s faith.

Pope John Paul the II said: "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, his Sacred Heart." She seemed to embody Christ’s compassion in an everyday manner. Unable to miraculously feed five thousand people, she fed a few at a time. (“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one,” she used to say.) Since she couldn’t raise the dead, she held the hands of the dying instead.

As the posthumous legacy of one small woman continues to grow, Catholics and non-Catholics alike would do well to consider Mother Teresa’s words of wisdom: “Be faithful in small things, for it is in them that your strength lies.”