Friends, today’s Gospel tells of Christ the King administering the final judgment. To those on his right he will say: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.” And to those on his left: “Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”

Much of Mother Teresa’s day was taken up with prayer, meditation, Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, and the Rosary, but the rest of her time, as we well know, was spent in the grittiest work among the poorest of the poor, practicing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Fr. Paul Murray, the Irish Dominican spiritual writer and sometime advisor to Mother Teresa, relates the following story. He was one day in deep conversation with Mother, searching out the sources of her spirituality and mission. At the end of their long talk, she asked him to spread his hand out on the table, and, touching his fingers one-by-one as she spoke, she said, “You did it to me.”