Mother Teresa's Letters Show Heroic Spiritual Struggle

Rome, Aug. 27, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The spiritual struggles of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, powerfully conveyed in a forthcoming book, are not evidence of any lack of faith, but an indication of her heroic struggle, a prominent Vatican cardinal has argued.

Cardinal Julian Herranz, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (the Vatican's top canon-law body), told the Italian daily La Repubblica that Mother Teresa clearly suffered through the "dark night of the soul," like many other great saints.

The book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light includes letters that Mother Teresa sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over a period of years, recounting her internal struggles and her sense of aridity in prayer.

The frank content of the letters-- describing the spiritual struggles of a woman who is revered worldwide as a saint-- has prompted some secular media outlets to question whether Mother Teresa had lost her faith in God. But any such interpretation of the work is profoundly mistaken, Church leaders agree.

Cardinal Herranz noted that leading mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about the "dark night of the soul." Their spiritual trials reflect the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said. They should be recognized, the Spanish cardinal added, as "a test of greatness of faith."

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former director of the Vatican press office, made a similar point in La Repubblica. Navarro-Valls observed that the anxieties expressed by Mother Teresa should be seen as "not a sign of lack of faith; they are normal, and in her case heroic."

The contents of the new book will not come as a surprise to Vatican officials who are studying the cause for canonization of Mother Teresa. Her correspondence was included in the file studied by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints prior to her beatification in 2003.

To play devil's advocate, if Blessed Mother Teresa had such a spiritual crisis (as the Time article might lead us to believe), then how can one explain what happened in Beirut in 1982.

This is shown as it happened in a documentary on Mother Teresa.

The situation was that Mother Teresa was in the Christian/Israeli side of Beirut. There were starving Muslim children in the Muslim/Syrian sector. These children were mentally handicapped, and their care givers had either fled or did not have food because of the fighting. These children were starving to death.

Mother Teresa, in the documentary, argued with these priests that the children must be saved!

The response was that neither side had much respect for religion -- a Catholic priest had been recently killed.

Additionally, it was said that neither the Israeli Prime Minister nor the US Ambassador could arrange a cease fire.

Mother Teresa left the room to go pray about the situation.

She then came back a while later, and said that the next day would be the eve of a feast of Mary. That there would be a cease fire at 6 am, and that she wanted vehicles ready so she could go get the children.

Since she had won the Nobel Peace Prize and was held in high regard throughout the world, the vehicles were waiting at the appointed time -- 6 am.

The documentary then cuts away to next morning. Sure enough the fighting had stopped! She and her group crossed over into the Muslim side. Videos of Mother Teresa and the children are then shown. The children are very close to starving to death -- they are nothing but skin and bones.

Mother Teresa, and her group, get the children loaded up into waiting vehicles. They then cross back into the Christian side. The fighting resumes after they cross back into the Christian side...

American Catholic’s Saint of the Day

September 5, 2007

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

(1910-1997)

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the tiny woman recognized throughout the world for her work among the poorest of the poor, was beatified October 19, 2003. Among those present were hundreds of Missionaries of Charity, the Order she founded in 1950 as a diocesan religious community. Today the congregation also includes contemplative sisters and brothers and an order of priests.

Speaking in a strained, weary voice at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II declared her blessed, prompting waves of applause before the 300,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. In his homily, read by an aide for the aging pope, the Holy Father called Mother Teresa “one of the most relevant personalities of our age” and “an icon of the Good Samaritan.” Her life, he said, was “a bold proclamation of the gospel.”

Mother Teresa's beatification, just over six years after her death, was part of an expedited process put into effect by Pope John Paul II. Like so many others around the world, he found her love for the Eucharist, for prayer and for the poor a model for all to emulate.

Born to Albanian parents in what is now Skopje, Macedonia (then part of the Ottoman Empire), Gonxha (Agnes) Bojaxhiu was the youngest of the three children who survived. For a time, the family lived comfortably, and her father's construction business thrived. But life changed overnight following his unexpected death.

During her years in public school Agnes participated in a Catholic sodality and showed a strong interest in the foreign missions. At age 18 she entered the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was 1928 when she said goodbye to her mother for the final time and made her way to a new land and a new life. The following year she was sent to the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling, India. There she chose the name Teresa and prepared for a life of service. She was assigned to a high school for girls in Calcutta, where she taught history and geography to the daughters of the wealthy. But she could not escape the realities around her—the poverty, the suffering, the overwhelming numbers of destitute people.

In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Sister Teresa heard what she later explained as “a call within a call. The message was clear. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.” She also heard a call to give up her life with the Sisters of Loreto and, instead, to “follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.”

After receiving permission to leave Loreto, establish a new religious community and undertake her new work, she took a nursing course for several months. She returned to Calcutta, where she lived in the slums and opened a school for poor children. Dressed in a white sari and sandals (the ordinary dress of an Indian woman) she soon began getting to know her neighbors—especially the poor and sick—and getting to know their needs through visits.

The work was exhausting, but she was not alone for long. Volunteers who came to join her in the work, some of them former students, became the core of the Missionaries of Charity. Other helped by donating food, clothing, supplies, the use of buildings. In 1952 the city of Calcutta gave Mother Teresa a former hostel, which became a home for the dying and the destitute. As the Order expanded, services were also offered to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, the aging and street people.

For the next four decades Mother Teresa worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor. Her love knew no bounds. Nor did her energy, as she crisscrossed the globe pleading for support and inviting others to see the face of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On September 5, 1997, God called her home.

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