Be the Good News

Mary Cassatt painting 1893

"If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families.  Sometimes it is hard for us to smile at one another.  It is often difficult for the husband to smile at his wife or for the wife to smile at her husband....

"It is easy to love those who live far away.  It is not always easy to love those who live right next to us.  It is easier to offer a dish of rice to meet the hunger of a needy person than to comfort the loneliness and the anguish of someone in our own home who does not feel loved.

"I want you to go and find the poor in your homes.  Above all, your love has to start there.  I want you to be the good news to those around you.." 

(Mother Teresa of Calcutta, from the book No Greater Love, MJF Books, NY, 1997, pp. 27-28)