Love Transforms

They need our hands to serve them and our hearts to offer them love. . . . One day I discovered a poor child who would not eat. His mother was dead. I found a sister who looked very much like his mother. I told her to do nothing but take care of the child. His appetite returned.

"We have been created with a purpose: to love and to be loved."

Jesus in the Poor

It is Jesus who hides under the likeness of the poor. . . . The lepers, the dying, the starving, the naked—all of them are Jesus.

"Throughout the day we have been in contact with Jesus through his image of sorrow in the poor and lepers. When the day ends, we come in contact with him again in the tabernacle by means of prayer."

God Cares for You

A man came to our house and said, “My only child is dying! The doctor has prescribed a medicine that you can get only in England.” While we were talking, a man came in with a basket of medicines. . . . Right on the top was the very medicine that man needed for his dying child! If it had been underneath, I wouldn’t have seen it. If he had come earlier or later, I would have not remembered. He came just in time. I stood in front of that basket and I was thinking, “There are millions of children in the world and God is concerned with that little child.”

"See God’s tender concern for you and for me! He would do the same thing for each one of you."

Tenderness at Home

I remember a mother of twelve children, the last of them terribly mutilated. . . . I volunteered to welcome the child into our house, where there are many others in similar conditions. The woman began to cry. “For God’s sake, Mother,” she said, “don’t tell me that. That daughter is the greatest gift of God to me and my family. All our love is focused on her. Our lives would be empty if you took her from us.” Hers really was a love full of understanding and tenderness. Do we have a love like that today?
—Mother Teresa’s address “Women and the Eucharist” in Philadelphia, August 7, 1976

"Peace and war start within one’s own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families."