To take up the cross and follow HIM (Mark 8:34)

RESTORE.

 Accompanying Mather Teresa... to the Home for the Dying, to the lepers and unwanted children, I found I went through 3 phases.

 The 1st was horror mixed with pity,

 the 2nd compassion pure and simple,

 and the 3rd reaching far beyond compassion, something I had never experienced before - an awareness that these dying and derelict men and women, these lepers with stumps instead of hands, these unwanted children, were not  pitiable , repulsive or forlorn, but rather dear and delightful; as it might be, friends of long standing, brothers and sisters.

 How is it to be explained - the very heart and mystery of the Christian faith and Cross? To soothe those battered old heads, to grasp those poor stumps, to take in one's arms those children consigned to dustbins, because it is His head, as they are His stumps and His children, of whom He said that whosoever received one such child in His name received Him (Malcolm Muggeridge).

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