Thursday, September 13, 2007

Mother Teresa was on the cover of Time magazine a couple of weeks ago (I am always behind in reading my magazines!) with the headline, "The Secret Life of Mother Teresa: Newly published letters reveal a beloved Icon's 50 yr. crisis of faith." When I first heard of this "shocking" revelation that Mother Teresa had experienced doubt and darkness in her prayer life, my reaction was, "Well, of course she did!" How could anyone see the misery and human suffering that she did day in and day out and never have any questions or doubt about God? Having read the article now, I realize that her suffering the "dark night of the soul," as it is traditionally called in spirituality (from St. John of the Cross), was much darker and more profound than I first supposed. She had very mystical and intense experiences of Jesus when she was young that literally compelled her to start out on her mission, and then just as she was getting started, the visions and even the closeness she felt to Christ simply ceased.

I have several thoughts on this revelation, starting with the question of whether her personal letters and most private writings should have been published at all, when she specifically requested that they be destroyed upon her death. While I recognize that these writings will hopefully offer a lot of support and comfort to all of us as we struggle with the daily difficulties of staying faithful to God, I can't help but feel that our reading them is a violation of her privacy. She was writing to her confessors, her spiritual directors, and in her private journals. How many of us would want the world reading those sorts of letters? Even famous people should have a right and the freedom to be able to write their innermost thoughts and feelings without fearing that their writings will one day be fodder for conversation over coffee (or material for someone's blog!). I find it a bit ironic that while she requested that her personal writings be destroyed, she was "overruled by her Church," but Pope John Paul II (who was Pope at the time of her death) similarly asked that his personal writings be destroyed upon his death. His wishes were respected. Thus while one can argue that Mother Teresa was a public figure that most people figured would one day be a saint, the same thing could be said about John Paul II.

Nonetheless, Mother Teresa's writings have been preserved and now published, so I suppose it is a moot point now! Given that fact, the letters do tell a spectacular story of her faith journey. The article in Time speculates and interviews people about their opinions on why her visions stopped, why she suddenly experienced such suffering in her spiritual life. My personal reflections were very different from all of the opinions ventured there, while of course realizing that the bottom line is that in this life we will never know the answers to those questions. I thought about the fact that most of us never experience the kind of visions and union with Christ she experienced, and how it had been that mystical experience that compelled her to begin her work with the poor. It seems to me that once she began her work, the purpose of the visions was accomplished and so she no longer needed to have extraordinary visions. The force of her own strong personality and will were enough to keep her moving forward in her work once she had begun. The thing about visions is that they are extraordinary, not ordinary. Most people never experience them. When they are given, they are given for a reason. The article says that there was one time she had relief from her spiritual suffering. After Pius XII died, she asked by virtue of his intercession for a sign that God was pleased with the Society. She received the sign she asked for and her suffering disappeared, but only temporarily. She eventually had to find a way to come to terms with "the absence" of Christ in her life. I can only imagine, though, how excruciating it must be to lose that sense of presence once you have experienced it. The prayers, Scripture, sacraments, etc., that bring such joy to us must pale in comparison to the immediate vision and voice of Christ. The amazing thing to me about Mother Teresa is her perseverance - in prayer, in belief, and in the incredible work she was doing - in the face of her inner turmoil. I expect she would have continued her work, even if she had come to lose her faith, because I think she believed in what she was doing. She did not lose her faith though, but rather understood her own suffering as a part of her solidarity with Christ on the cross. Her "crisis of faith" reveals not a closet atheist (as Christopher Hitchins would have one believe), but the very definition of true faith - belief in the face of doubt - echoing those words from Mark I quoted a few weeks ago that we all need to say to God at times, "I do believe, help my unbelief!" (9:24)

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