We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

Dear Saints,

The quote above, from Saint Mother Teresa, is one of my favorites. I was reminded of it recently, as our women’s group saw No Greater Love (a film about her life) last week.

We all knew Mother Teresa to be a model of extraordinary charity. What we may not have known is that her interior life was marked by a sense of being separated from God. This “dark night of the soul,” an expression of her deep identification with Jesus, led Mother Teresa to an ever-greater commitment to God's purposes.

This weekend’s Gospel passage recounts the healing of ten lepers. One outcast of these ten was considered to have been doubly excluded, because he was a Samaritan. This also made his praise-filled return, “glorifying God in a loud voice,” doubly unlikely. Should he not, after all, have been doubly blind to the plan and purposes of Israel’s God?

In and as Jesus, the Samaritan encountered the God of merciful, forgiving, healing love. His restoration sparked an act of faith: the Samaritan returned, falling at the feet of the Master, entrusting his life to Jesus and giving himself over to God’s purposes. When Jesus tells him, “Stand up and go” – which, in the Greek, is more like “having risen up, go forth” – we know that the Samaritan now shares in the power of Jesus’ resurrection and is to busy himself with God’s purposes.

Like the Samaritan and Mother Teresa, we are called to entrust our hearts and lives to Jesus and commit ourselves to his purposes. Made whole by God’s healing love, we identify with Jesus more deeply the more we seek to make God’s mercy known to everyone we encounter.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ