Chapter 13, Loneliness, Chapter 14, God and Christianity Summary and Analysis

Teresa opens the chapter distinguishing between material and spiritual poverty, the latter of which she considers worse. The worst suffering is to feel alone and unloved. It is exclusion that pushes people to addiction; drugs help people forget their deprivation. She then tells the story of a woman in New York who had died alone and when she was found, rats had begun to eat her corpse. She considers this loneliness a great tragedy. She then recounts a senior citizens' home in England, and while they were well provided for materially, they were all sad. They want someone to visit them.

The alienation Teresa sees around her in the poor who are socially and emotionally alienated is the alienation Christ suffers. She then notes that many of her Co-workers are responsible...