Mother Teresa often saw God in the "poorest of the poor." Twice in my life, I was one of these most needy ones. Once it was as a beggar, sitting with an empty coffee cup on the steps of churches, looking for coins from Sunday morning Mass-goers. But before that had come a time of spiritual poverty, when I was among the poorest of the poor without realizing it. It was during this dark season that I received my first alms—not from kindly passersby, but from God himself.