Thoughts from the past . . .

Sometimes we think our credentials can stand in place of our actions. Fr. Dick Rice is a noted counsellor of priests and nuns in the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. He was giving a day of recollection to Mother Teresa and some nuns. He said, "Mother, what is, would you say, your most difficult problem?" Immediately, he felt he shouldn't have asked the question.
But Mother Teresa came right back and said, "Professionalism."
Fr. Rice blinked and repeated "Professionalism?"
"Yes," said Mother Teresa. "When I send a sister off to school to become a nurse or a doctor, she returns with her degrees and diplomas, I always have to interrupt her after a while in her work. She has become too intellectual about her work. She has lost the personal touch. So I send her down to the ward where we have people with advanced diseases who are dying. I tell her to just sit with them, empty their bedpans, hold their hand, feed them. Then, after a couple of months I let her go back to her work."
If anyone is a no-nonsense person, it's Mother Teresa. In her reply she showed how important it is not to lose the common touch, no matter how many degrees one has after his or her name.