Who Can Love

What had impelled Sister Monica Joan to abandon a privileged life for one of hardship, working in the slums of London's Docklands?

"Was it love of people?" I asked her. 

"Of course not," she snapped sharply. 

"How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? 

One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love people."

(from The Midwife, pg 318)