Sandra Hook, a schoolteacher from Vancouver, spent her summer vacation in 1984 working for Mother Teresa in Calcutta. One of her jobs at Nirmal Hriday, the home for the dying destitutes, was to bathe a woman who was very sick. Sandra could not stand the sight of the woman, who was covered with filth and sores and had her nose partially eaten away by insects.

Then she says, she remembered the words of Mother Teresa, "When you touch the poor, touch them as though you are touching the loving Jesus."

Suddenly, her whole perspective changed. She did not find it difficult to bathe the woman.


It is possible to serve without loving, but it is impossible to love without serving.