{"id":509,"date":"2007-09-24T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/09\/fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa.html"},"modified":"2007-09-24T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-24T10:30:00","slug":"fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/09\/fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa.html","title":{"rendered":"Fr. Jim Martin on Mother Teresa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Jim Martin wrote the following piece, “In My Soul,” about Mother Teresa’s dark night for the Catholic weekly magazine, “America<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

Perhaps Catholics should not have been surprised by the revelations in “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”<\/a>, a new collection of letters by the “saint of the gutters” that show her astonishing battle with spiritual darkness. Reports of her “dark night” had been circulating since 2003, when Brian Kolodiejchuk, a priest member of the Missionaries of Charity and postulator for her cause for canonization, published on the Catholic Web site Zenit.org a series of articles about her struggles. That same year, in the journal First Things, Carol Zaleski wrote an article entitled \u201cMother Teresa\u2019s Dark Night,\u201d which quoted selections from her letters. So some information about Mother Teresa\u2019s interior struggles with darkness, doubt and despair have been available to the general public for several years.
\nWhat is new about “Come Be My Light<\/a>” is that it gathers together the bulk of letters, which reveals the full measure of her inner turmoil. For the first time readers will learn that Mother Teresa suffered this relentless aridity for roughly 50 years\u2014with one brief respite\u2014until her death in September 1997. “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss\u2014of God not wanting me\u2014of God not being God\u2014of God not really existing,” she wrote to a confessor in 1959.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

According to Father Kolodiejchuk, these letters were gathered from the files of bishops, priests and spiritual directors to whom Mother Teresa wrote and who had retained them. In a recent interview, Father Kolodiejchuk noted that although Mother Teresa had hoped the letters would be destroyed, the gathering together of such writings is an essential part of the canonization procedure. The letters are also a critical resource for the Missionaries of Charity as they seek to understand more fully the distinctive spirituality, or charism, of their founder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Early Mysticism and Later Darkness<\/strong>
\nThe posthumous collection is largely an extended cry to God, expressed through candid letters. A recurring syntactical habit\u2014the frequent use of dashes\u2014adds to the breathless urgency of her lamentations. \u201cIn my heart there is no faith\u2014no love\u2014no trust\u2014there is so much pain\u2014the pain of longing, of not being wanted\u2014I want God with all the powers of my soul,\u201d she writes in the letter of 1959 quoted above.
\nThe feeling of God\u2019s absence is not uncommon in the lives of the saints or in the lives of average believers. The Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross called it the dark night and posited it as a necessary stage for the ascent to mystical union with God. St. Ignatius of Loyola termed it spiritual desolation in his manual for prayer, The Spiritual Exercises. \u201cOne is completely listless, tepid and unhappy,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand feels separated from our Creator and Lord.\u201d During her final illness, St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun, experienced a desolation that seemed to reflect doubts over whether or not anything would await her after her death. \u201cIf you only knew what darkness I am plunged into!\u201d she once said to the sisters in her convent.
\nFor Mother Teresa, the decades of spiritual darkness, which began not long after she founded the Missionaries of Charity, were all the more acute when she reflected on her earlier relationship with Jesus.
\nThe woman born Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu was raised in a devout Catholic family in Skopje, Albania. Her mother, Drana, was a generous woman who used to care for an elderly neighbor who was ravaged by alcoholism and covered with sores. \u201cWhen you do good,\u201d Drana told her daughter, \u201cdo it quietly, as if you were throwing a stone in the sea.\u201d
\nA Jesuit priest\u2019s talk at her parish stirred within Agnes the desire to do missionary work, and in 1928 at the age of 18 she was overjoyed to be accepted by the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Three months after her entrance, Sister Mary Teresa (she took the name to honor Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux) was sent on a mission to India to work in a girls school in Calcutta. In 1937 she pronounced her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and, as was the custom in her order, was given the title Mother. Five years later she made a private vow to Jesus \u201cnot to refuse Him anything.\u201d
\nIn 1946 on a train ride en route to a retreat (and some rest) in Darjeeling, she was surprised to undergo a series of intense mystical experiences, which included hearing the voice of Jesus, who asked her to begin working with the poorest of the poor. \u201cWilt thou refuse?\u201d asked Jesus. These experiences, which she would term her \u201ccall within a call,\u201d convinced her to take the difficult step of leaving the Sisters of Loreto to found a new order.
\nHer later years of darkness were all the more baffling to her in the wake of the unique graces received early in her religious life. Moreover, since clergy and members of religious orders were (and are) regularly counseled to rely on Jesus as their most intimate friend, his subsequent disappearance from Mother Teresa\u2019s inner life was nearly impossible for her to understand.
\nShe also seems to have been slow to recognize that her darkness may have been a kind of answer to her fervent prayers and private vow; in 1951 she wrote of her wish \u201cto drink only from His chalice of pain\u201d (her emphasis). For the reader who knows what awaits her, this is among the most difficult passages to read in Come Be My Light. The subsequent trials recall the comment of another Teresa, of \u00e1vila, who said that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
\n\u2018I Have Come to Love the Darkness\u2019
\n<\/strong>
\nUltimately, in 1961 Mother Teresa found some relief from her interior turmoil through the counsel of Joseph Neuner, S.J., who suggested that her dark night might be one way God was inviting her to identify with the abandoned Christ on the cross and with the abandoned poor. He also reminded her that the very longing for God itself came from God. \u201cFor the first time in this 11 years,\u201d she wrote the Jesuit theologian, \u201cI have come to love the darkness.\u201d Indeed, one of the many poignant aspects of Come Be My Light is that it makes clear how much someone can suffer without the right spiritual guidance, and how much relief can come with a few words of wise counsel.
\nStill, while this provided further insight and what one might call intellectual relief, God\u2019s absence continued unabated in her prayer. In 1967 she wrote again to Neuner, \u201cFather I want to tell you how\u2014how my soul longs for God\u2014for him alone, how painful it is to be without Him.\u201d
\nMother Teresa understood how odd her situation was: the woman acclaimed as a \u201cliving saint\u201d struggled with her faith. Though she sometimes admitted feeling like a \u201chypocrite,\u201d as she notes in one letter, she decided that a public admission of her struggles would direct focus on herself, rather than on Jesus. Consequently, she suffered her spirtual trials largely alone. One less publicized aspect of her journals lies in this personal act of humility: Had these letters been destroyed, few would ever have known of her trials. As her own mother had counseled, she was trying to do good quietly.
\nWhy?<\/strong>
\nMost believers who read Come Be My Light will at some point ask, \u201cWhy would God do this?\u201d Of course one might just as well ask, \u201cWhy is there suffering?\u201d
\nIn his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius Loyola suggests three possible explanations for spiritual desolation. First, we may be \u201ctepid, lazy or negligent\u201d in prayer. Clearly this was not the case for Mother Teresa, who was utterly faithful to her daily prayer, to the Mass and to frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Second, it may test \u201chow much we are worth and how far we will extend ourselves in the service and praise of God.\u201d Again, if Mother Teresa, who worked tirelessly until her death, did not \u201cextend herself,\u201d who of us has? Third, it may give us \u201ctrue recognition\u201d that consolation is \u201ca gift and grace from God our Lord.\u201d In other words, it reminds us who is in control. But after 10 or 20 years of the darkness, Mother Teresa had grasped this, as her letters to her spiritual directors demonstrate.
\nAny divine \u201creasons\u201d for her trials remain mysterious. But with hindsight certain fruits of her suffering\u2014besides the heightened ability to identify with the poor\u2014may suggest themselves.
\nFor one thing, Mother Teresa, like many saints, had a commanding ego, forceful enough that she argued for the foundation of her order in the face of fierce opposition. A common theme in the early letters is her relentless drive to have the young order approved, a pursuit born of certitude in her mystical experiences. \u201cWhy make me wait so long? …How long must I wait? May I not write again or straight to Rome?\u201d she wrote to the Archbishop of Calcutta in 1948, when Vatican approval for her order was not immediately forthcoming. Later, when her ministry flourished, she was showered with worldly honors, including perhaps the ultimate secular accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. Did her spiritual trials temper a natural pride that might have otherwise subtly compromised her mission?
\nLikewise, one might argue that Mother Teresa\u2019s letters, the fruits of her spiritual agony, which she asked to be destroyed, will now help a new group of people. Having ministered to the sick and dying in Calcutta during her lifetime, she will now minister to the doubtful and the doubting as a sort of saint for the skeptics. Could this be a way God will use her sufferings to bring about greater good? Is this the Easter Sunday of Mother Teresa\u2019s long Good Friday? Only God, and now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, knows the answers.
\nGreat Saint, Complicated Seeker<\/strong>
\nCome Be My Light reveals Mother Teresa to be one of the greatest of all the saints. To that bold statement church historians and theologians will surely respond, \u201cWait and see.\u201d Yet it is difficult to think of anyone who accomplished so much with so little spiritual sustenance. The closest analogues are St. Jane Frances de Chantal, founder of the Congregation of the Visitation, whose turmoil lasted for three decades, and St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionist order, who underwent an even lengthier trial, but was granted relief toward the end of his life.
\nWhile every saint has faced spiritual trials, most have felt close to God during their years of active ministry. St. Ignatius Loyola, for example, was frequently overcome with emotion while celebrating Mass, even to the point of tears. Some were even granted unique graces. In his later years St. Francis of Assisi enjoyed mystical experiences at his prayer and, during one retreat, received the stigmata.
\nIn contrast, Mother Teresa felt nothing for 50 years\u2014except for a brief respite\u2014all the way until her death. \u201c[M]y soul is just like [an] ice block,\u201d she wrote.
\n“Come Be My Light<\/a>” also provides an unintentional response to those who during her lifetime dismissed Mother Teresa as a sort of well-meaning but unsophisticated believer. Her letters show how, when confronted with a complex spiritual crisis, she questioned with candor, vigor and passion, and ultimately responded with trust, love and works of charity. She is revealed as a complicated and sophisticated seeker.
\n\u2018I Have Never Refused You Anything\u2019<\/strong>
\nThe unrelieved spiritual aridity of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta makes her earthly accomplishments all the more remarkable. Her letters also offer some lessons to believers. First, they are a reminder that what could be termed radical Christianity is not simply the province of those called saints. Many imagine that since the saints enjoy privileged access to God in prayer, their work is somehow easier, lighter\u2014a mistaken view that excuses the \u201caverage believer\u201d from striving for sanctity. Instead, Mother Teresa\u2019s life reminds us that holiness is a goal for all believers, even those given to doubt. Second, her letters remind us that dryness, darkness and doubt are natural parts of the spiritual life, whether ordinary believer or extraordinary saint. Finally, they remind us that fidelity does not depend solely on feelings or emotions.
\nBlessed Teresa remained heroically faithful to the original call from the very God who seemed to have withdrawn from her. Shortly before her death, one of her sisters noticed her praying alone before an image of Christ and overheard a phrase that could sum up her life. \u201cJesus,\u201d she prayed, \u201cI have never refused you anything.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fr. Jim Martin wrote the following piece, “In My Soul,” about Mother Teresa’s dark night for the Catholic weekly magazine, “America“: Perhaps Catholics should not have been surprised by the revelations in “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”, a new collection of letters by the “saint of the gutters” that show her astonishing battle with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism"],"yoast_head":"\nFr. 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Jim Martin wrote the following piece, “In My Soul,” about Mother Teresa’s dark night for the Catholic weekly magazine, “America“: Perhaps Catholics should not have been surprised by the revelations in “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”, a new collection of letters by the “saint of the gutters” that show her astonishing battle with…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/09\/fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-09-24T10:30:00+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/09\/fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/09\/fr-jim-martin-on-mother-teresa.html","name":"Fr. 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