The Memorial of Saint Teresa of Calcutta
Now these things, brothers, I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to think beyond the things which are written, that none of you be puffed up against one another. For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn't receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
You are already filled. You have already become rich. You have come to reign without us. Yes, and I wish that you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor. Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure. Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.
I don't write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, you don't have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways, And gracious in all his works. The Lord is near to all those who call on him, To all who call on him in truth.
He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He also will hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserves all those who love him, But he will destroy all the wicked.
My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord. Let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Now on the second Sabbath after the first, he was going through the grain fields. His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said to them, "Why do you do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day?"
Jesus, answering them, said, "Haven't you read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, How he entered into God's house, and took and ate the show bread, and gave also to those who were with him, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests alone?" He said to them, "The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath."
We begin with a woman who needs little introduction, but whose life always bears revisiting. Teresa of Calcutta spent decades serving the dying poor in the streets of Kolkata, and she did it not from a place of spiritual ease, but through decades of interior darkness — trusting God even when God felt utterly silent.
That context makes today's readings land with particular weight.
Paul's words to the Corinthians are almost uncomfortable in their rawness. He describes the apostolic life as a kind of public humiliation — hungry, beaten, homeless, treated like the filth scraped off the world's floor. And yet, underneath this catalog of suffering, there's no bitterness. What emerges instead is something like a father's steady love. Paul isn't competing for status. He's trying to call his children back from the trap of spiritual pride — the quiet assumption that our gifts, our wisdom, our faith, are somehow *ours*.
The question cuts right to the heart of it: *What do you have that you didn't receive?*
Consider how easily we forget this on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. We take credit for our patience, our generosity, our competence — as if these weren't given to us, moment by moment, from a God who is, as the psalm reminds us, near to all who call on him in truth.
And then Jesus, walking through grain fields on the Sabbath, reminds the Pharisees that rules exist to serve the human person, not the other way around. The law was never meant to be a wall. It was meant to be a door.
Teresa understood this. She didn't serve the poor to fulfill a religious obligation. She served them because she saw Christ in their faces.
So here are the questions to carry today:
What gift are you quietly claiming as your own achievement? Where might you be using the letter of the law to avoid the harder call of love? And who, in your ordinary life today, is waiting to be seen the way Teresa saw?