From the book ‘Mother Teresa — A Simple Path’
… from Mary that shows another way to make contact with people in need: Love has no meaning if it isn’t shared. Love has to be put into action. You have to love without expectation, do something for love itself, not for what you may receive. If you expect something in return then it isn’t love, because true love is loving without conditions or expectations.
If there is a need, God will guide you, as He guided us to serve those with AIDS. We don’t judge these people, we don’t ask what happened to them and how they got sick, we just see the need and care for them. I think God is telling us something with AIDS, giving us the opportunity to show our love. People with AIDS have awakened the tender love in those who had perhaps shut it out and forgotten it.
Sister Dolores shows how simply being there with love is often enough: “There is a lot of fear at the beginning for those who come to us with AIDS. It is hard for them to cope with the fact that they are going to die. But being there with us and seeing us with others in their last moments makes a difference. I remember in New York that the mother of a man from Puerto Rico offered to nurse him if he came home. He thanked her but said he would remain with us, though he would visit her. One day he told me, “I know when I am dying you will be there holding my hand,” because he had seen us doing it with others and knew he wouldn’t die alone.
“It’s quite simple really. The dying are moved by the love they receive and it may be just a touch of my hand, or a glass of water, or providing them of some kind of sweet they desire. You just take that to them, what they ask for, and they are satisfied and know someone cares for them—and that, in itself, is a great help to them. Because of this they believe that God must be even kinder, more generous, and so their souls are lifted up to God. As we don’t preach we just do what we do with love, they are touched by God’s grace.”
From the book ‘Mother Teresa — A Simple Path’ Ballantine Books, October 1995 (p.87-88)
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
