Two weeks ago Steve Angrisano told me an inspiring story about a friend of his who went over to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa.
Apparently his friend went to . . . what should we call it? Her office? . . . and was instructed to wait. After several hours she walked in and asked him a simple question: "Do you want to work with me?"
"Yes." He responded, and she turned around and walking out of the room. Steve's friend was a little confused, wondering if Mother Teresa had meant "Do you want to work with me now?" or "Do you want to work with me someday?"
He decided he didn't want to miss this chance, and ran after her. She lead him to a train station where homeless people gathered for shelter. Mother Teresa stopped in front of a gutter where a man was laying in the sewage, she turned to Steve's friend and broke the silence: "Pick him up." And she walked away again.
Disgusted by the filth that covered the homeless man, Steve's friend waited until Mother Teresa had turned her back and then rolled down his sleeves to cover his arms so his skin wouldn't directly touch the homeless man's skin.
He followed Mother Teresa back to her shelter and she led him into a bathroom where she again gave him simple directions: "Wash him." Then she stepped back and waited.
He didn't want to wash the homeless man; he didn't even want to touch him anymore, but when you are facing a living Saint, you do what you're told.
Steve told me that while his friend was washing the homeless man, he saw Jesus. Not in a figurative way, but literally. He saw the whip marks, he saw holes, and he looked into the eyes of our Lord. And he held that man and sobbed. After a while Mother Teresa walked up behind him, put her hand on his shoulder and said: "You saw him, didn't you."
God led me to the Catholic Church through the desire he put in me to serve others. I loved the simplicity of making dinner for someone who was hungry, or chatting with a homeless man whose mind was more crippled than his twisted body. And I yearn for that simplicity.
Unfortunately, there is nothing simple about ministering to middle-class American teenagers. And I've often considered leaving this ministry in order to commit myself, and my family to a life of simpler, more direct service.
Then I came across something that I haven't seen since High School. Do you remember this:
It's Maslow's original five-step diagram of human needs. And I found some hope in it.
Mother Teresa spent her life pulling people out of gutters to bathe and feed them. She was taking care of their basic "Biological" and "Safety" needs.
The middle-class American teenagers I work with already have those two basic needs taken care of. So we begin by loving and accepting them and trying to give them a place they can feel like they belong because that is the need they are struggling with. Our teenagers are wallowing in the gutters of isolation created by our ego-driven and money-driven society, and they are covered in the sewage of television and its messages. Pulling them out and washing them off is not a simple job and there is no immediate gratification, but this is an immensely important ministry. . . and ultimately God put me here, so I'm not going to leave until he tells me to.
“There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."
~Blessed Mother Teresa
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