I’ve been reading excerpts of the collected private letters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, “Come Be My Light” which reveal that this modern day saint suffered the most profound crisis of faith of any past saints.

She revealed to confidants that far from being in communion with her god, she felt completely abandoned from just after the outset of her mission in 1947.

She first claimed that some time in that year, while on a train journey from Darjeeling to Calcutta, Jesus had spoken directly to her and had asked her to work in the slums of the city, dealing directly with "the poorest of the poor" — the sick, the dying, beggars and street children. "Come, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor," he told her. "Come be My Light". The Vatican, which eventually accepted that Jesus had indeed spoken directly to her, granted her the authority to found a new religious order and begin her work.

The rest is history. Except that this sense of communion with god evaporated soon after she started her work and its absence remained for almost the entire 50 years of her mission.

As Teresa reveals to one Father confessor after another, "Jesus has a very special love for you, [But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak”.

and

“Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?”

and again,

"The more I want [Jesus] — the less I am wanted. Such deep longing for God — and ... repulsed — empty — no faith — no love — no zeal. — [The saving of] Souls holds no attraction — Heaven means nothing — pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything".

As we now know, despite this lifelong crisis of faith, she never wavered in her outward demonstrations of love for her god and adherence to the dictates of her beliefs and publicly declared her religious commitment until her death in 1997 at the age of 87.

Having read all this, my feeling is that a dark night of the soul is the very crux of faith, a sine qua non, in that it would not be faith if a god regularly communed with a believer, it would simply be a reasoned response to empirical evidence. Faith is a maintaining of one’s beliefs even in the face of crushing abandonment. How easy would theism be if the believer was to be guaranteed regular corporeal manifestations of a deity. How easy, though, for the one abandoned?

Perhaps Mother Teresa will become a saint twice over. Once for her work with the poorest of the poor and once to cynics for her example of belief in the light of faith even in the face of interminable darkness.

Yadda, I find Teresa's crisis of faith or 'dark night of the soul' to be the most intriguing chapter of her life story.

When her mission began she determined that she would wed herself to the 'Christ crucified' and would contemplate, as those at the foot of the cross apparently did, the pain and suffering of the dying 'God-Messiah'.

Teresa declared that she was prepared to feel the pain of this suffering for the rest of her life although she would hardly have expected (as happened) that she would descend into a lifelong spiritual night.

But was this abandonment the reason for the sage advice 'be careful what you wish for'?

One of the sufferings of  the 'Christ Crucified' was his perceived abandonment by his God (Mark 15:34 - And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?).

Whatever the reason, which of course we cannot know, it is impossible to overstate what a gargantuan marathon of faith it must have been to live for another 50 years with that public smile while doggedly maintaining her missionary zeal with an unwavering outward profession of faith that she no longer felt and love for a god who remained, for the rest of her life, unmanifested, invisible and silent in her heart.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2008 at 2:41pm:

As with many of us old enough to contemplate the 'meaning' of Teresa and her mission, I looked on her, I have to say, yes with admiration of sorts but I was always somewhat suspicious of her motives - don't ask me why. But having read some of her private letters, I feel a genuine and profound sense of sympathy for her. I think there is a lesson for everyone in her ordeal, Catholic or not, Christian or not, non-theist or atheist.

We all face crises of faith of some description (albeit usually of lesser magnitude - but crises nonetheless)... Within a marriage, as a parent, in our work and at those 3 AM moments when we wake and ask ourselves the great existential questions. We all reach the fork in the road at some time in our lives. And a number of those times, we realise that the right thing would be to stay the course even if the easier option would be to diverge. Those are the times when Teresa's strength of will could be an inspiration or to just give pause for thought that if a four foot Albanian nun could keep the faith for 50 years, then just maybe anyone can for at least a small fraction of the time.

Maybe it was this atheistic side of her which enabled her to do such important selfless work here on earth  

Without disrespect towards her lifetime effort, perhaps her perseverance could also be explained in more earthly terms. Perhaps she was a victim of her own success. Although it has to be accepted that because she argued for and was granted authority to begin a new religious order of nuns, she must have expected that others would follow her.

Maybe what she didn’t expect was just how successful the order would be.

Soon after her mission began, hundreds of women began to join the order and many without religious vocation offered their services. Then there was the Malcolm Muggeridge book and documentary, ‘Something Beautiful for God’ that propelled her to mega-stardom. Then the Nobel Peace Prize. Then the endless queues of world leaders, including Pope John Paul II, all lining up for a photo opportunity with her. Then the vast amounts of cash that began to flow into the Missionaries of Charity coffers.

Perhaps the enormity of her success trapped her in a kind of stardom she neither sought nor wanted and evoked in her a guilt complex based on a deeply felt sense of unworthiness (after all, she claimed Jesus had considered her an unworthy servant but he would ask of her to begin her mission anyway). Perhaps also escape from the mission with the world looking on would be impossible without doing damage to the church she loved and betrayal to the poorest of the poor and to those who had followed her into their hovels.

We can only speculate now, but her perseverance despite her doubts, grave misgivings and sense of abandonment appears to have only magnified her life and work and I imagine it has made her even more worthy of the sainthood which is almost certain to be bestowed on her more likely in the near future than the distant.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2008 at 3:11pm:





helian,

Your words reminded me of a conversation i had with a friend, about 20 years ago.

I had never guessed of his difficulties, but he confided in me that his marriage was in a difficult patch, he and his wife were not communicating.

He said he was not angry [with his wife], but he felt he was having a life crisis, and that he was considering leaving his wife, and three young children.

In our discussion, i pointed out his responsibility to [the stable development of] his young children, and suggested that the most responsible thing to do, would be to stay in the marriage [at least] until his children had left school.

I recall, i rather bluntly stated, it was his decision, but that he had taken on a responsibility, and the responsible thing to do, would be for him to fulfil his responsibilities toward his family [children].

[he stayed. i still have contact with this person and his wife. the children have left home. and he and his wife both seem happy now, in their marriage.]


Many of us suffer crises of life.

Our suffering in life is not unusual.

But the crises [themselves] are not as 'critical', as how we respond to them [from within ourselves].

To me, it seems that many of our life crises emerge, from thoughtlessly pursuing our own desires [for our own 'happiness'].




++++++


I'm a Christian, but there is a lot of sense stated in Buddhism's,

The Four Noble Truths....

1. To live, is to suffer.

2. Suffering arises from our attachment to desires.

3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering is attainable.





#1, To live, is to suffer!

How true!

muso wrote on Dec 4^th, 2008 at 8:24am:

Interesting, but not surprising, to hear some of the downside of an austere ministry.

Listening to the subtext of Livermore's story, I picked up a note of dissent and questioning that began at the start of her vocation and continued to the end. Surely she could not have been under much illusion that the work would be anything other than grotesque. Mother Teresa never concealed the condition of the people she ministered to.

I found it strange that Livermore did not consider becomming a co-worker which did not require becomming a nun. In the end I think she dived into the vocation unprepared for its demands and got burnt.

Well she never seemed particularly religious to me, after all, she practised the antithesis of normal religious behaviour, she did not just preach and pray, she got down and actually got stuck in to actually helping.