St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) said,
“If you give what you don’t need, it isn’t giving.”
She used to tell a story of how one day she was walking down the street when a beggar came up to her and said,
“Mother Teresa everybody is giving to you, I also want to give to you. Today for the whole day I got only fifteen rupees (thirty cents). I want to give it to you.”
Mother Teresa thought for a moment:
“If I take the thirty cents, he will have nothing to eat tonight, and if I don’t take it I will hurt his feelings. So I put out my hands and took the money. I have never seen such joy on anybody’s face as I saw on the face of that beggar at the thought that he too could give to Mother Teresa.”
She said that gift meant more to her than winning the Nobel Prize. Mother Teresa went on:
“It was a big sacrifice for that poor man, who had sat in the sun the whole day long and received only thirty cents. Thirty cents is such a small amount and I can get nothing with it, but as he gave it up and I took it, it became like thousands because it was given with so much love. God looks not at the greatness of the work, but at the love with which it is performed.”
-Submitted by Fr. Joseph Dovari