Romans 13:1-10….
Paul’s words in Romans are striking in their simplicity, “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” All the commandments, all the rules that had shaped the people of God across generations, are gathered by Paul into one profoundly uncomplicated truth, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm. Therefore, love fulfils the law.
Perhaps this is why I find St Teresa of Calcutta, whose feast we celebrate on the 5th of September, such a compelling witness for our own age. Here was a modern woman, living in a complicated world of politics, poverty, inequality, religious difference and extraordinary social change, who somehow managed to strip discipleship back to its simplest expression. She did not need to carry the tablets of the Law before her or continually recite the commandments of the Hebrew Scriptures. She carried Christ.
And she carried him with her hands.
Hands that washed wounds.
Hands that held the dying.
Hands that fed the hungry.
Hands folded quietly in prayer.
Hands that reached for people others had stopped seeing.
There was something beautifully uncomplicated about her understanding of the Gospel. Jesus had already shown her what to do, love God and love your neighbour. And so she did. Not theoretically. Not from a distance. Not because it was efficient or comfortable. She simply, very simply, lived Christ’s commandment.
It is much easier sometimes to discuss theology, analyse Scripture, debate what should be done, or construct elaborate programs of response. Teresa reminds us that eventually the Gospel must become flesh. Someone must be fed. Someone must be listened to. Someone must be forgiven. Someone who feels invisible must be looked in the eye and recognised as beloved.
And in that person, Christ waits.
I am also drawn to the extraordinary friendship and mutual witness between Teresa and St John Paul II. They were such different figures, one travelling the world as Pope, speaking to millions; the other deliberately choosing the margins, kneeling beside those whom the world barely noticed. Yet there was a tenderness and recognition between them. Each seemed to understand what animated the other, an intense love of Christ that demanded to become love of the human person.
When John Paul II visited Mother Teresa’s home for the dying in Calcutta in 1986, the image of these two modern saints together became almost a parable in itself. The Pope and the tiny religious sister stood among the poorest of the poor. The universal Church entered a small house where human dignity was being restored one person at a time.
Neither witness diminishes the other. Together they remind us that the Church must proclaim love and become love.
Maybe holiness really can be that simple.
Not easy.
But simple.
See the person before me.
Recognise Christ within them.
And love.
St Teresa did not change the world because she possessed extraordinary resources. She changed the small piece of the world placed before her because she allowed her ordinary human hands to become Christ’s hands of love.
Perhaps that is the invitation for each of us.
We do not need to solve everything. We do not need to understand everything. We do not even need to see where every act of love will lead.
We simply need to ask…
Who is before me today, and how might my hands become the hands of Christ for them?
Because when love becomes something we do, rather than simply something we believe, the commandment is no longer written only on stone or page.
It is written into being.
by Virginia Fortunat