disguise in love

read this reflection below and was immediately inspired. how true this is, and how beautiful it is too! when i'm spending with the families here in baguio city, i don't necessarily think to myself, oh, i'm doing this because this is what Jesus would do....but i do it because we all just want to be loved and cared for, right? and i don't think identify with this word of "service." it always seems like an obligation, or like, a chore or something...i don't provide services. i kinda just live and it just so happens that i get to live in this beautiful way! :) learning and loving along the way with the people God sends my way! grateful for the life i live and the opportunities i have to grow deeper in love everyday with my brothers and sisters! blessings to you! :)

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taken from Smokey Mountain, during Global Urban Trek-Manila in 2005

“We must therefore be proud of our vocation,” she says, “which gives us the opportunity to serve Christ in His poorest…in the slums, Jesus chooses as His disguise the miseries and poverty of our people in the slums.  You cannot have the vow of charity if you have not got the faith to see Jesus in the people we contact.  Otherwise our work is no more than social work…we do it for Somebody.” - Mother Teresa

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Christ identifies himself with those in the most urgent conditions of need: the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, and imprisoned. The lesson is simple. In responding to the desperate needs of others, we respond to him: "As you did the last person, you did to me."

Dorothy Day often said, "Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed."

It is not only in words that Christ identified with those who have nothing and regarded with contempt. He was born in a stable because no better place was offered for his mother to give birth. As a child he was a refugee. He was imprisoned and died a criminal's death. Given all that, is it a surprise that God's hospitality to us is linked to our hospitality to those who have little or nothing. If we avoid Christ in the poor, we are avoiding the gate to heaven.

- Jim Forest, from Confession: Doorway to Forgiveness (taken from A Maryknoll Book of Inspiration by Michael Leach and Doris Goodnough)