Hi, friends in exile, got a minute?
Shane Claiborne spent a summer in the slums of Calcutta with Mother Teresa. He described one experience in his book The Irresistible Revolution:
“‘People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it’s like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery—like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget—her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn’t going to ask, of course. ‘Hey Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?’” He reports, it turns out she always scrounged the worst pair of donated shoes for herself so that others would get better ones.
Now, as a Baptist-Christian, I don’t track with Catholic theology in many ways. However, Mother Teresa’s act of self-giving love for her sisters is surely Christlike. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus said (John 13:34). Jesus went to the cross for us. How might He want us to give ourselves for the sake of others?
Smiley Mudd