Mother Teresa is arguably one of the most well known people of faith of the 20th Century.
At the age of eighteen she left her home to join the Sisters of Loreto.
Always attracted to the missionary life, she eventually received permission to leave her order of cloistered nuns to minister to "the poorest of the poor," in the slums of Calcutta.
She began alone, but by 1950, with her work officially under the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, she had a dozen sisters helping. By 1997, Mother Teresa's Order had over 4,000 sisters working all over the world.
While most of this is almost common knowledge, what is not so commonly known is that for the entire length of Mother Teresa's work, spanning six decades, she struggled with loneliness and the feeling that God had abandoned her.
She regularly wrote to Fr. Celeste van Exem, her spiritual director, mentioning this struggle. The letters were deeply personal. In fact, she asked that they be destroyed after her death because she was concerned that they "would make people think more of me and less of Jesus." But, fortunately for us, they were collected by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, (the director of the Mother Teresa Center) and published as Come Be My Light.
Mother Teresa's loneliness may have begun at an early age. When she was eight, her father passed away. After leaving home to become a nun eight years later, she never saw her Mother again. (At one point, Mother Teresa tried to arrange to have her own mother visit her in India, but the Albanian government refused the request.)
In 1979 Mother Teresa received the Noble Peace Prize. During her acceptance speech she said:
"Holiness is not a luxury of the few. It is a simple duty for each of us." She went on to say that "the poor don't need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love."
A 2015 movie, The Letters does a wonderful job of chronicling Mother Teresa's work, with a special focus on the letters she wrote.
Far from putting Mother Teresa in a negative light, these letters are actually an inspiration and assurance that even among spiritual giants, a walk of faith isn't a walk done by feelings.
In reviewing The Letters for the National Catholic Register, Tim Drake wrote:
"Her letters have been largely misunderstood by the secular media, thinking that they somehow suggest her lack of belief. In fact, the letters echo Christ's words to Thomas: 'Blessed are they who believe without seeing,' or in Mother Teresa's case, we might say: Blessed are those who believe without feeling. It is for this reason that the film is an important one."
Feelings of being far from God when simultaneously serving on the front lines are fairly common.
Even Jesus had his agony in the garden prior to the crucifixion.
Others who have done incredible work, like Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day have freely written of their longing to feel close to God.
If you'd like a Biblical basis for these feelings, Psalms is full of laments. Many of the major prophets also went through extreme trials which resulted in feeling very far from God's presence. (When you consider that they were trying to get the attention of an entire nation during times of extreme spiritual darkness it only makes sense.)
So we shouldn't be thrown for a loop when we encounter the "dark night of the soul."
In fact, quite often, going through such periods of darkness is a sign of an authentic relationship with God.
We wonder where God is because we long for God.
We cry out from a place of deep love and longing for intimacy.
And God often uses these difficult times, as with Mother Teresa, to help us identify with the very people that God is calling us to serve.
Photo Credit: www.biography..com
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