Emphasis Preaching Journal

Mother Teresa grew up in Albania. Her father was generous with money for the poor, and there were often strangers at the table whom her mother fed. Mother Teresa remembered helping wash an alcoholic woman covered with sores. With this background she carried out her ministry in the slums of Calcutta, helping the destitute and the dying. At one time she provided care for a leprous woman who had no fingers with which to care for herself. Another time, she carried a dying woman, found in the streets being eaten by rats and cockroaches, to various hospitals pleading for someone to take her in. It was customary for families to put dying relatives out in the street to avoid funeral costs, and hospitals were reluctant to accept such people because there was no one who would pay for them. Carrying out her ministry in these circumstances, Mother Teresa explained, "It is the Christ we touch in the broken bodies of the starving and destitute. We are loving him in his distressing disguise."

Christ Jesus changes all our relationships. Because of him we see people in a different light. In this text, Paul urges Philemon to do the same with Onesimus, to see him with the eyes of Christian love, no longer as a slave, but as a brother in Christ.