Mother Teresa: Living the Gospel

"Explain the following statement: loneliness is the greatest poverty of rich countries."

As we saw in the documentary of Mother Teresa and her work, there are countries in the world that have more homeless people than not. Here in America we might see a homeless person occasionally, maybe begging for food or money, or even just sleeping on a park bench. This breaks my heart. I want to help them, but I just don't know what I could do because lets be honest, I'm only sixteen. I don't have money to give them or a place to stay, but as said by Mother Teresa this isn't even the greatest poverty. In poorer countries than ours there are homeless people who are so weak from malnutrition that they don't even have the energy to beg for food. They don't have the energy to do anything, but lie there and yet Mother Teresa tells us that we are more in poverty than they are. We aren't necessarily in poverty of hunger. We are in the poverty of loneliness. Someone might have a million dollars, but still more miserable than a man who has only five hundred dollars, rent to pay, and a family to feed because he is lonely. The man with the family has people to love and people to love him back, but the man with the million dollars, doesn't have people to love or people to love him back and money can not buy happiness. And this is what I think this statement from Mother Teresa means.
My favorite quote by Mother Teresa is: "Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." This quote ties into the statement she made that I mentioned previously. Before watching this documentary, I never really thought of people who could buy anything they ever wanted as people in poverty, but now I can see that they are. It's not the type of poverty that first comes to mind when first thinking of poor people, but it is poverty nonetheless. It is a poverty of love and I now understand that this is the worst type of poverty there is, but now I know that I can really help, even though I am young. I can make people feel that they are not alone and that they do have people that love them, even if I just cheer of a person who is having a bad day. Mother Teresa taught me this.

Praying as We Go

Every morning, before class starts, we have prayer. We hear a short summary of the gospel for that day, whose birthday it is, and who we should keep in our prayers. These few minutes we take in the morning really make a difference in the rest of our day. Starting out our day this way really helps us be in the right frame of mind for the day. I really like when we are told who needs our prayers because then whenever we are praying individual we can make sure they get the prayers they need.