Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B *Alternate* First Reading (no Psalm)

THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME — Year B

***Alternate* First Reading: By Mother Teresa from *No Greater Love***

In every country, there are poor. On certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life. I have also seen in Europe and America very poor people sleeping on newspapers or rags in the streets. There are those kind of poor in London, Madrid, and Rome. It is too easy simply to talk or concern ourselves with the poor who are far away. It is much harder and, perhaps, more challenging to turn our attention and concern toward the poor who live right next door to us.

When I pick up a hungry person from the streets, I give him rice and bread and I have satisfied that hunger. But a person who is shut out, feels unwanted by society, unloved and terrified – how much more difficult is it to remove that hunger?

You in the West have the spiritually poorest of the poor much more than you have the physically poor. Often among the rich and very spiritually poor people, I find it is easy to give a plate of rice to a hungry person, to furnish a bed to a person who has no bed, but to console or to remove the bitterness, anger, and loneliness that comes from being spiritually deprived, that takes a long time.

The words of Mother Teresa.