Mother Teresa's suffering

Before these letters became known I had no real attachment to her. I of course often uttered the conventional words of admiration for her, but really somewhat grudgingly--she never seemed real or human to me. Now that has changed. I can't say that I've been through the same thing--I've experienced depression, even despair, but my intellect never doubted God--but her sufferings make it impossible to think any longer of her as the dreamy, even cartoonish figure she sometimes seemed to me. She obeyed despite the lack of any warm fuzzy feelings to console her, without the cheap emotional anesthesia that satisfies so many. Of all those who claim never to have doubted, I wonder how many could have done as well.

Is it possible that Mother Teresa did not see that Christ is her love for others? Was she possibly looking for someone seperate and apart? Perhaps she couldn't see it because she was too close to the source. If so, no wonder she might have struggled with faith. Christ is her love, and ours, that redeems humanity, makes it worthwhile despite the suffering and ill will. No physical law can do that. Her love, and ours, is the Christ child brought into the world every day, no less than it was that one day in the year 0, without physicality but with love.

"My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?" Even Jesus experienced spiritual emptiness on the Cross. It seems like Mother Teresa was quite familiar with "God's silence."

I will check out the "Time" cover story, and add the book to my reading list. I can only say that I wish she had been able to talk about her doubts while ministering to the poor of Calcutta. Far from weakening the faith of the masses, I think knowing that even the saintly don't have it all together would be a big help.

Thanks, Rod.

This topic has been the subject of extensive discussion on Therese Borchard's (a deeply religious Catholic) "Beyond Blue" blog about depression.

After all, what some might call a five-decade "dark night of the soul," others might call profound depression. I don't think it is too reductionist to say Mother Teresa may have been going through both.

Some people are going to use these revelations to support all kinds of beliefs and non-beliefs. Could it be that what we are seeing here is a testimony of caregiver burnout and the damage it can do to idealism. With the suffering she saw, she may well have become angry at God. Anger at God blocks one's prayer life. If she had had opportunities for breaks from the work and spiritual regeneration, she may have been able to feel God's presence again.

Do we forget that she was an ordinary person with the same needs and foibles as the less saintly? We expect our clergy to be saints with inexhaustible appetites for thankless spiritual service? Shouldn't we see them as the same as us with the potential for spiritual burnout? Her actions are typical of a caregiver who goes on despite feelings of burnout. They do the work, but they feel nothing.

To me, Mother Teresa was given a particular cross to carry, the cross of feeling the absence of God.

Most of us Christians have felt God's presence at some point or other in our lives, and some of us have suffered His absence too, though none of us for as long as Mother Teresa did.

But so many people suffer from a poverty that Mother Teresa often spoke about: not the poverty she experienced in her daily care of the destitute and ill, but the poverty of the soul, that does not find God because it doesn't seek Him, and that doesn't seek Him because it would actually rather that He not be.

I think it is possible that the awareness of the absence of God which she carried for so long was a way for her to try to carry and ease the burden of this poverty just as she carried and eased the burden of the material poverty of so many for so long.

According to what I've read, including excerpts from her letters, she doubted whether Jesus existed, and despaired of his apparent absence from her soul. Yet she never denied Him, and lived as if He existed, hoping that He really was there. It was an almost superhuman act of faith. She felt her soul utterly abandoned, and yet, by force of will held tight to her convictions, including the conviction that Jesus really had spoken to her in 1946 and asked her to be his light for the poor.

What she illustrates is that faith is not just a feeling. That you can have no feeling at all, and suffer terribly from that lack, yet still have faith. She had, I'd say, an infinitesimally small bit of faith, as most of us measure it. But she built a whole life on that speck. And what a life it was!

Here is more info.:

"Rome, Aug. 27, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The spiritual struggles of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, powerfully conveyed in a forthcoming book, are not evidence of any lack of faith, but an indication of her heroic struggle, a prominent Vatican cardinal has argued.

Cardinal Julian Herranz, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (the Vatican's top canon-law body), told the Italian daily La Repubblica that Mother Teresa clearly suffered through the "dark night of the soul," like many other great saints.

The book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light includes letters that Mother Teresa sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over a period of years, recounting her internal struggles and her sense of aridity in prayer.

The frank content of the letters-- describing the spiritual struggles of a woman who is revered worldwide as a saint-- has prompted some secular media outlets to question whether Mother Teresa had lost her faith in God. But any such interpretation of the work is profoundly mistaken, Church leaders agree.

Cardinal Herranz noted that leading mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about the "dark night of the soul." Their spiritual trials reflect the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said. They should be recognized, the Spanish cardinal added, as "a test of greatness of faith."

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former director of the Vatican press office, made a similar point in La Repubblica. Navarro-Valls observed that the anxieties expressed by Mother Teresa should be seen as "not a sign of lack of faith; they are normal, and in her case heroic."

The contents of the new book will not come as a surprise to Vatican officials who are studying the cause for canonization of Mother Teresa. Her correspondence was included in the file studied by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints prior to her beatification in 2003."

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Brad, that's a terrific and mind-expanding question. I think the answer is, "both".

I found that starting at the top down instead of the bottom up, is a much more satisfying path to finding answers to difficult questions and that we'll be much better off in the long run, if we bypass the treacherous waters of human logic and go straight to the Source.

So. What does God tell us about his nature? James answers that in verse 1:17: "..all good and perfect gifts come from God." Integrating this truth into the fiber of Christian thought, gives us a clue to understanding the stumbling blocks of imperfect examples.

In other words, that M.Teresa did acts of mercy (from whatever baseline of belief or disbelief) does not negate her example as the
goodness of God, personified.

That said, I think your words, "secondary laminate" (religious or humanist)is too light a phrase to apply to those who give their lives in service to others. Motivation to live a life like that comes from another place entirely, whether the instrument acknowledges that or not.

It is interesting what made mother Tereza serve people, was it love to people or she forced herself to do good to them out of conviction in her chosiness? And how it is possibleto believe in being chosen without believing in the one who chose you? Perhaps she exagerrated her not believing?
I know i have absolutely no right to judge a person who had worked out so much good and also sufferd a lot, and i m not trying to condemn in the least, it just made me remeber my old question: when a person does a good deed for other but doesn't love him ( i don't assert Mother Teresa didn't), is it counted as a positive point for his soul? And how to understand words of Faust's hero that he is "Ein Teil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft"?

I knew one person who said he sponsors poor children and orphans all over the world, he sends to them money, necessary things, toys, mobile phones, etc, but his favourite jokes as far as i noticed were about butts and penises, and he jokes badly about relations of men and women. For some reason i didn't like he send money to children in Russia, i thought that if i had a child and he would become an orphan i wouldn't like him to receive money from him, better to eat nothing, but he done good things and money don't smell, maybe it's me such a rotten person that i would prefere children of others to stay hungry rather than accept help from that person? (who knows maybe he suffers and hopes charity will help him?). Definitely it has absolutely nothing to do with Mother Teresa.
Perhaps she is really a Saint.

"...[her doubt] has prompted some secular media outlets to question whether Mother Teresa had lost her faith in God. But any such interpretation of the work is profoundly mistaken, Church leaders agree."

Well, of course church leaders will agree on this. This hardly ends the discussion.

We should rightly admire Mother Teresa for her devotion to the poor and sick. But her life is not without controversy: her virulent opposition to birth control -- while in line with church doctrine -- is a fantastically bad remedy for poverty, and there are some accounts that, although she took in huge amounts of money in donations, her missions were often shabby, decrepit places. Author Christopher Hitchens -- not a popular guy around these parts, I realize -- has suggested that Mother Teresa loved poverty and suffering more than she actually loved poor people. She thought suffering was a gift from God, and this was reflected in the poor care her patients often received.

In any case, I have to echo weemaryanne: I don't see how her doubts make her any more admirable. Relatable, maybe.

I think it's rather sad, actually, that this person lived her entire life based on something that she probably didn't believe.

Christine, you are simply repeating factoids about Calcutta which have no basis in truth.

Read physician Aroup Chatterjee's extensive and documented book; some chapters are available at www.meteorbooks.com/introduction.html

Teresa helped very few people in Calcutta or anywhere else. That was not her purpose anyway.

Timbo and weemaryanne, what's the matter? Why do you two stick around here? It's the opposite of where you will find many birds of a feather for yourselves.

Is God's word--He writes it on everyone's heart, even you two--getting a little too loud? Is your doubt that you are just glorified apes without souls getting more annoying? Is the killing of kids in the womb finally starting to sicken even you?

Well, welcome! Stick around. You may find what you're looking for, e.g., saints are people just like you. Not semi-gods, but flesh and blood with doubts and pain and questions.

You seem to share a few of the same sentiments as Dinesh D'Souza over at his AOL blog, no?

http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/08/24/mother-teresas-dark-night-of-the-soul/

I tend to agree as well - what an incredible article that was in TIME.

How can we be sure the Article about Mother Theresa is not a made up storu of atheists? Pls educate me. send me you comments via: timeless.truth@yahoo.com
Thank you!!