OK, I'm a bit behind the times. I'm on dial up. I don't do FaceBook. I prefer full sentences (IPFS). I don't fax, instant message, or text message. Occasionally I receive a text message, usually finding it way after it was sent. Yesterday, I saw the announcement as it came in - I was hanging hip.
You can probably guess what it was about; only one of the most emailed New York Times articles of the last twenty four hours (I used "The Google"). I got that same message all the cool kids were texting to each other; "Look at the Times' article on Mother Teresa - verrrry interesting!!!
It's fascinating, actually. And I include it in full here in the first comment; A Saint’s Dark Night, by James Martin (thats right, the Jesuit priest). Read it and then we'll text about it during tomorrow's 's staff meeting (LOL).
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:58 PM
6 Comments:
A Saint’s Dark Night
By JAMES MARTIN
Published: August 29, 2007
THE stunning revelations contained in a new book, which show that Mother Teresa doubted God’s existence, will delight her detractors and confuse her admirers. Or is it the other way around?
The private journals and letters of the woman now known as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta will be released next month as “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” and some excerpts have been published in Time magazine. The pious title of the book, however, is misleading. Most of its pages reveal not the serene meditations of a Catholic sister confident in her belief, but the agonized words of a person confronting a terrifying period of darkness that lasted for decades.
“In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss,” she wrote in 1959, “of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.” According to the book, this inner turmoil, known by only a handful of her closest colleagues, lasted until her death in 1997.
Gleeful detractors may point to this as yet another example of the hypocrisy of organized religion. The woman widely known in her lifetime as a “living saint” apparently didn’t even believe in God.
It was not always so. In 1946, Mother Teresa, then 36, was hard at work in a girls school in Calcutta when she fell ill. On a train ride en route to some rest in Darjeeling, she had heard what she would later call a “voice” asking her to work with the poorest of the poor, and experienced a profound sense of God’s presence.
A few years later, however, after founding the Missionaries of Charity and beginning her work with the poor, darkness descended on her inner life. In 1957, she wrote to the archbishop of Calcutta about her struggles, saying, “I find no words to express the depths of the darkness.”
But to conclude that Mother Teresa was a crypto-atheist is to misread both the woman and the experience that she was forced to undergo.
Even the most sophisticated believers sometimes believe that the saints enjoyed a stress-free spiritual life — suffering little personal doubt. For many saints this is accurate: St. Francis de Sales, the 17th-century author of “An Introduction to the Devout Life,” said that he never went more than 15 minutes without being aware of God’s presence. Yet the opposite experience is so common it even has a name. St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic, labeled it the “dark night,” the time when a person feels completely abandoned by God, and which can lead even ardent believers to doubt God’s existence.
During her final illness, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century French Carmelite nun who is now widely revered as “The Little Flower,” faced a similar trial, which seemed to center on doubts about whether anything awaited her after death. “If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into,” she said to the sisters in her convent. But Mother Teresa’s “dark night” was of a different magnitude, lasting for decades. It is almost unparalleled in the lives of the saints.
In time, with the aid of the priest who acted as her spiritual director, Mother Teresa concluded that these painful experiences could help her identify not only with the abandonment that Jesus Christ felt during the crucifixion, but also with the abandonment that the poor faced daily. In this way she hoped to enter, in her words, the “dark holes” of the lives of the people with whom she worked. Paradoxically, then, Mother Teresa’s doubt may have contributed to the efficacy of one of the more notable faith-based initiatives of the last century.
Few of us, even the most devout believers, are willing to leave everything behind to serve the poor. Consequently, Mother Teresa’s work can seem far removed from our daily lives. Yet in its relentless and even obsessive questioning, her life intersects with that of the modern atheist and agnostic. “If I ever become a saint,” she wrote, “I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ ”
Mother Teresa’s ministry with the poor won her the Nobel Prize and the admiration of a believing world. Her ministry to a doubting modern world may have just begun.
James Martin is a Jesuit priest and the author of “My Life With the Saints.”
Dude. You gotta have Facebook. Then you can play Scrabble with Jill Sobule :)
Oy, you're too hip for me now.
Why would it surprise anyone that Mother Theresa had doubts? Doesn't every person who thinks seriously about such things question G-d's existence at some time? To me, it shows she is a real person, just like us. And that makes her accomplishments more impressive.
I'm with Miriam (above). It seems to me that if you haven't questioned and challenged your faith, or *been* challenged by it... haven't been forced to knock when the door is closed... you risk holding a shallow view of God.
The world, the universe, and the mystery of the transcendant is often beyond our poor human comprehension. The horror of deep poverty and of unending suffering *should* make us question what it's all about.
Thank you for reprinting the article, Neil. I find myself even more impressed with Teresa than I already was.
(Speaking of dark nights of the soul: cf. "Diary of a Country Priest" by Georges Bernanos, a classic that explores this theme.)
Belief, unbelief
Stem from thought or its absence.
Which when? Hard to tell.
Thanks Shoshana - Maybe...one day.
ML - Thanks. I agree.
AD - Thanks, very well put. That book was recommended to me by a mentor when I was young and I had trouble getting into it. I think if/when I try it now I'll appreciate it.
K - Thanks.
The context is key
for faith and doubt, you and me
Thats what I believe
BTW K - check out http://www.aish.com/societyWork/arts/The_Jewish_Haiku.asp
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