Posted on 09/22/2007 11:23:38 AM PDT by wagglebee
We should not be surprised. Mother Teresa’s life and ministry was always a stark contrast to the prevailing Western culture that embraced her as its unlikely spiritual icon. So shouldn’t it also be true that in her recent spiritual autopsy, the torment of her soul would be uncovered? Apparently nowhere can we find a soft spot in this woman’s faith. In a world where feelings are the predominant measure of personal worth, Teresa learned to believe without them.
In the book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, some pretty shocking secrets about the “Saint of the Gutters” are exposed. A lifetime of doubt is revealed in letter after letter to her closest spiritual advisors. For her, Christ was everywhere except in her heart. Thus her love for Christ compelled her outward, where she found Him, rather than inward, where she knew only His absence.
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.
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.
For atheists and anti-Catholics alike, these confessions provide opportunity for a certain amount of gloating. Atheists can say, “See, even your most revered believer was admittedly deluding herself. This only confirms that religion is nothing but a human fabrication.” And anti-Catholic Christians can skewer her on being a works-oriented saint who never found the inner fulfillment of her own faith because of faulty theology. But these conclusions are much too simple and shallow, and they do not take into account the totality of her life, and the deeper manifestations of joy she was able to experience in her faithfulness.
Further investigation reveals a woman whose determination to believe in spite of what she felt carried her through the dark night of the soul in a night that never saw the dawn. Mother Teresa finally concluded that this emptiness was a part of her cross to bear. Jesus told Thomas, who doubted His resurrection until he saw, heard, and touched the risen Savior, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
I wonder, in light of the demands of our current pleasure-oriented culture, if this could also mean, “Blessed are those who believe without feeling?” If so, then Mother Teresa was truly the patron saint of faith without feelings.
As evangelicals, feelings have come to play a major role in the spirituality we espouse. We talk about accepting Christ as our personal Savior, and that manifests itself in feelings of fulfillment, joy, forgiveness, and satisfaction. We go to church and focus on a style of worship that has everything to do with feelings and nothing much else. That is why music is so central to our understanding of worship today, because music touches our feelings, and contemporary music especially gets us where we are used to being moved by the music of our culture. If you go home from church having not felt close to God, church—or at least worship—was a failure.
And what about the volumes of self-help Christian books all geared towards expanding the inner life? How about all those sermons and seminars that deal with personal growth, daily devotion, and spiritual formation? How would Mother Teresa have related to these things? It appears that she would have found them empty. Not that she wouldn’t have tried—God knows that she did—but the trying would not have yielded fruitful results. “Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?” she wrote. How long would you want to stare into that?
Imagine spending your whole life in the dark underbelly of the poorest, most diseased areas of the world, holding, bathing, and caring for the least desirable of people, and not having any sense of God communing with you in your private moments. I can’t imagine what made her tick, unless she found a certain identification with Christ in His own loneliness and darkness of soul—“Father, why have you forsaken me?”
Indeed something of this made its way into her writings:
For the first time in years—I have come to love the darkness—for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a ‘spiritual side of your work’ as you wrote—Today really I felt a deep joy—that Jesus can’t go anymore through the agony—but that He wants to go through it in me.
I just have the joy of having nothing—not even the reality of the Presence of God. I accept not in my feelings—but with my will, the Will of God—I accept His will.
What does it mean to accept the will of God with your will and not your feelings? I don’t know exactly, but I think this is an eloquent expression of what the so-called spirituality of today is lacking. My guess is that it has something to do with accepting the will of God and doing it regardless of what you feel like.
Could it be that God left Mother Teresa empty inside in order to drive her outside of herself to find Him in the needs of others? Whether or not this is a valid explanation of God’s will for her, I believe it is a valid expression of where we need to go now as His church. We have been focused for too long on our own spiritual navels. Time to leave our souls to the One who made us, and seek Him in those around us who need help and love.
“Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
It was a long, dark night for the soul of Mother Teresa—close to a half a century—but joy does come with the morning, and there are morning stars all gathered around her now, dancing for joy.
Amen!
Catholic Ping
Jesus was obviously a great bodhisattvia, and Mother Teresa, in her great desire to share in the sufferings of Jesus, shared in this path.
Thank you for that.
What a sad religion.
In 1519, Martin Luther had the following experience (old translation):
"Meanwhile, I had already during that year returned to interpret the Psalter anew. I had confidence in the fact that I was more skillful, after I had lectured in the university on St. Paul's epistles to the Romans, to the Galatias, and the one to the Hebrews. I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up till then it was not the cold blood ab out the heart, but a single word in Chapter 1, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed," that had stood in my way. For I hated that word "righteousness of God," which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they call it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, "As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!" Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, "In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, 'He who through faith is righteous shall live.'" There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scripture from memory. I also fount in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God."
Amazing to see you admit you find Christianity sad.
A Christian has assurance of salvation, something foreign to Roman Catholicism, a religion that only claims to be Christian, but is actually pagan.
Many claim that.
...Catholicism, a religion that only claims to be Christian, but is actually pagan.
Spoken like someone who carries a five-hundred year anti-Catholic grudge around them, like an albatross.
You make a superb point. It is actually TWENTY-SIX months old.
Someone's burning need to mock the Catholic Church is obviously so strong that they actually go spelunking through the archives for any scrap of a desperate angle they can find.
Sad indeed.
Good grief. It’s even sadder than I thought.
Their hatred is so burning that they have actually IGNORED THE SOURCE.
This was a commentary on BreakPoint (Chuck Colson's site). It IS NOT a Catholic website, they just aren't anti-Catholic as some of the bigots on here would prefer.
Not only ignored the source, but ignored the message.
Off topic, but has anyone heard from Judith Anne?
Let's see:
As evangelicals, feelings have come to play a major role in the spirituality we espouse. We talk about accepting Christ as our personal Savior, and that manifests itself in feelings of fulfillment, joy, forgiveness, and satisfaction. We go to church and focus on a style of worship that has everything to do with feelings and nothing much else. That is why music is so central to our understanding of worship today, because music touches our feelings, and contemporary music especially gets us where we are used to being moved by the music of our culture. If you go home from church having not felt close to God, church—or at least worship—was a failure.
And what about the volumes of self-help Christian books all geared towards expanding the inner life? How about all those sermons and seminars that deal with personal growth, daily devotion, and spiritual formation? How would Mother Teresa have related to these things? It appears that she would have found them empty. Not that she wouldn’t have tried—God knows that she did—but the trying would not have yielded fruitful results. “Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?” she wrote. How long would you want to stare into that?
Imagine spending your whole life in the dark underbelly of the poorest, most diseased areas of the world, holding, bathing, and caring for the least desirable of people, and not having any sense of God communing with you in your private moments. I can’t imagine what made her tick, unless she found a certain identification with Christ in His own loneliness and darkness of soul—“Father, why have you forsaken me?”
~snip~
What does it mean to accept the will of God with your will and not your feelings? I don’t know exactly, but I think this is an eloquent expression of what the so-called spirituality of today is lacking. My guess is that it has something to do with accepting the will of God and doing it regardless of what you feel like.
Could it be that God left Mother Teresa empty inside in order to drive her outside of herself to find Him in the needs of others? Whether or not this is a valid explanation of God’s will for her, I believe it is a valid expression of where we need to go now as His church. We have been focused for too long on our own spiritual navels. Time to leave our souls to the One who made us, and seek Him in those around us who need help and love.
So, I'm curious what exactly you find "sad".
Is it the evangelical author's acknowledgment that the evangelical movement is based on feelings and little else?
Is it the evangelical author's acknowledgment that Mother Teresa found personal identification with our Lord's feeling of being forsaken by the Father?
Is it the evangelical author's acknowledgment that evangelicals need to focus on WORKS?
Or is it that the evangelical author doesn't seem to hate Catholics?
No, but I was out of the country (and away from the internet) all of last week.
*********************
And shows compassion for a Catholic?
To paraphrase Rahm Emmanuel, you never want to waste a good chance to hate on Catholics.
The author acknowledges that evangelical Christianity is actually very empty and that evangelicals measure everything based on what sort of feelings they experience. If that doesn’t sound like a “sad” religion then I don’t know what does.
Odd that they have to find a thread which is over two years old to accomplish this.
I wonder if wayoflife.org (the acknowledged experts on Italian Renaissance architecture) will now add BreakPoint and Chuck Colson to their list of the damned.
I am glad I am Catholic.
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