Earlier this month, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of the poor, an order that began in Calcutta, India, and quickly spread around the world. She shared with the priests, brothers, sisters and laity who had joined her the mission to see Christ in the poor and to quench His thirst for souls. Yet, sometimes when people came to her wanting to join her work in Calcutta, she would tell them to leave, to find “their own Calcutta.” By this, she meant the people — often those in their midst — who were poor because they felt lonely or unloved.

Jesus also once sent someone away when he asked to follow Him closely. After Jesus had exorcised a demoniac in the land of the Gerasenes, this man ran up to Jesus and begged to follow Him. But Jesus replied: “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in His pity has done for you” (Mark 5:19).

Why would Jesus and Mother Teresa send people home, instead of allowing them to join them closely in their work? These people were on fire with the desire to spread the goodness, love and mercy of God that they themselves had first received. And yet their mission was not to leave their homeland to spread God’s love but rather to return to “their own Calcutta” in order to bring Christ’s presence there, to quench His thirst for those souls.



It can sometimes be easy for us to think of serving others as an add-on to life, as something that we have to go somewhere else to do. While it is important for us to reach out in service to those we may not know personally, if this is our only focus as regards service in our living of the Christian life, we are missing something very important indeed. It is always essential for us to remember that “charity begins at home.” Even before sending us out into the world, the Lord is sending us “home to [our] famil[ies]” to bring to them His love and His mercy.

Are there people in our midst, with whom we interact daily at home or at work, who feel unloved or unwanted, who need to be loved by others with the love of Christ in a concrete and powerful way? Do those in our lives at times feel abandoned or inadequate because we fail to pay attention to them, being too caught up in all the “good things” we “need” to do? Do we recognize in the people around us the image of Christ Himself, who is thirsting for our love?

St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” Reaching out to those with whom we live to show them their own lovableness will, of necessity, help us to realize our own personal worth and dignity. Let us share with the poor among us the great richness of being loved in and by Christ. Let us share with others the knowledge and the experience that they are loved, wanted, and cared for intimately and personally by Him!

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Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.