Mother Teresa tells a story of walking past an open drain and catching a glimpse of something moving in it. She investigated and found a dying man whom she took back to a home where he could die in love and peace. 'I live like an animal in the streets,' the man told her. 'Now I will die like an angel'.

She lived almost fifty years of her life completely dedicated to the care of the poor and the marginalized. Astonishingly, for those nearly fifty years she identified completely with the poor she served by her own experience of being seemingly unwanted and unloved by God. In a mystical way — through this painful interior "darkness" — she tasted their greatest poverty of being "unwanted, unloved, and uncared for."

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

By abortion the Mother does not learn to love, but kills her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women to the same trouble. So abortion leads to more abortion.

God has created us to love and to be loved, and this is the beginning of prayer-to know that He loves me, that I have been created for greater things.

On certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life.

Duty is a very personal thing. It is what comes from knowing the need to take action and not just a need to urge others to do something.