Many times over the space of about nine years, I had the privilege of offering Holy Mass, preaching and working with Blessèd Teresa of Calcutta. Once while we were having a conversation, I noticed that she had placed an international award she had received on the floor as a doorstop. She graciously accepted the object made of some expensive-looking crystal, and would not hurt anyone’s feelings by getting rid of it, but she did make good use of what otherwise would have been useless to her.

The dynamic love that Mother Teresa shared confounded the sentimentalists who had a romantic notion of ’social work.’ She and her religious sisters patiently tried to form in true virtue volunteers who wanted to ‘feel good’ by acts of philanthropy. Mother did not romanticize destitution, nor did she condone vice when she cared for its victims. She meant it when she spoke of Christ in the “distressing” guise of the poor. One writer has said that when the needy are difficult and even offensive,

that’s the point at which the self-congratulatory do-gooders quit and go home and where the real charity kicks in. That’s the point at which it’s impossible to see the face of Jesus in the destitute (or sick, or deranged) except as a pure act of faith. And that’s the point at which it matters whether Jesus is divine or not, because belief in the repulsively disguised spark of divinity is the only reason to keep on giving love in exchange for contempt.