quote about Mother Teresa

"To love the poor for the love of Christ does not mean to love him "through a third party," but to love in person. This is the mystery that was impressed in the life of Mother Teresa and of which she prophetically reminded the Church.

The love of Jesus drove Mother Teresa, as it did other saints before her, to do things that no other motive in the world -- political, economic, humanitarian -- would have been able to make her do. Once, someone watching what Mother Teresa was doing with a poor man exclaimed: "I wouldn't do it for all the gold in the world!" Mother Teresa answered: "Neither would I!" Which meant: for all the gold in the world no, but for Jesus yes.

Mother Teresa was able to give to the poor not only bread, clothes and medicine, but that of which they have greater need: love, human warmth, dignity. It shocked her to recall the episode of a man found half-eaten by maggots in a rubbish dump who, after being taken home and looked after, said: "Sister, I have lived like an animal on the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for," and he died shortly after saying with a big smile: "Sister, I am going to God's house." Mother Teresa with an abandoned child in her arms, or bending over someone dying is, I believe, the very icon of the tenderness of God."