Brother Andrew, who together with Mother Teresa founded the Missionary Brothers of Charity, would be urging me to rejoice in the fact that I have been called, as he was in his latter years, to join the ranks of the small and relative voiceless about whom both he and I have written. Like the dear friend he was to me, he would gently prompt me to see as a beautiful if painful privilege the accompaniment "in a small boat" of someone whose weakness is increasing and whose body and mind, though still exceptional for her years, are slowing down.

Though I never actually met Little Sister Magdeleine, I have for the last months been listening daily to her voice as I translated her Christmas letters and I feel sure that she would commend my present life as an experience of Bethlehem and of Nazareth. This is my chance to contemplate - and in some small sense emulate - the mystery of an almighty God who chose to become human in the form of a tiny, vulnerable infant and to live for much of his life as a humble carpenter. This is an opportunity to seek transformation into his image and likeness, to exercise that gentleness and humility which have their source in the Heart of Jesus and are the expression of his love.

Dom Bede Griffiths would, I believe, be directing me (almost wistfully for, as a man of supreme intellect, he felt the fact that real exposure to the poor was something that his own life lacked) not to resist the opportunity to let my heart be opened.

And Mother Teresa, dear Mother, would sense as she always did, the inner workings of my heart and mind, and know that I knew my mother was my "poor person" in whom Christ hungered, thirsted, mourned and was alone. She would know too that I was "poor" in my response to that daily cry for love, that I did the small things needed but not always with great warmth, and remind me that prayer was the only answer.

In his extraordinary compassion, Brother Roger would be telling me, with his distinctive little sigh, that I was not called to be perfect but only to try and "live the little bit of Gospel I have grasped". And that when I found myself tired, impatient, resentful, angry and unable even to pray, others would be there to pray for me, for that was what communion was all about.

Jean Vanier, in his great understanding of both the spiritual and the human, would I suspect (forgive me if I am misrepresenting you, Jean) add his voice, in uncanny though predictable harmony, to all the others in proclaiming the value of listening to the person with the disability both in my mother and in me. He would recognize my reluctance to acknowledge the underlying sadness of persistent loss and my fear that the curtain must come down for my mother before too long because the umbilical cord is never really severed and her curtain is my curtain too.  He would look with compassion on my intermittent urge for liberation for he too has known a love not incompatible with a yearning for release. And he would walk with me for a while and with soft questioning rather than advice, confirm what I already know: that there is healing and peace in acceptance and in stooping to wash disabled feet.