Posted on 08/24/2007 8:40:01 AM PDT by HarleyD
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who has been put on the “fast track” to sainthood, was so tormented by doubts about her faith that she felt “a hypocrite,” it has emerged from a book of her letters to friends and confessors. Shortly after beginning her work in the slums of Calcutta, she wrote: “Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God — please forgive me.” In letters eight years later she was still expressing “such deep longing for God,” adding that she felt “repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal.” Her smile to the world from her familiar weather-beaten face was a “mask” or a “cloak,” she said. “What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.” Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 and was beatified in record time only six years later, felt abandoned by God from the very start of the work that made her a global figure, in her sandals and blue and white sari. The doubts persisted until her death.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
And according to her letters, that's where she ended up, in doubt, not like you and me, who thankfully have ended up in belief.
My mama always told me, "Never put things in writing." Unfortunately, my mama didn't write that down.
Yep, more’s the pity.
Read Ps. 73, and get back to me about doubting your faith. It happens to the best of us.
And if God chooses to give that gift in a different measure to someone else, should you or I look down on them?
"What do you have, that you have not received?"
From a "Catholic" Source:
“I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”
“Some call Him Ishwar, some call Him Allah, some simply God, but we have to acknowledge that it is He who made us for greater things: to love and be loved. What matters is that we love. We cannot love without prayer, and so whatever religion we are, we must pray together.”
There are many things to consider here, but one of them is NOT how Mother Teresa “ended up”. Her life was in God’s hands and so her judgment is not ours to make and anyone should hesitate to do so. It is God’s mystery, not ours, how things were when she met her God face-to-face.
What I do know is that it isn’t at all uncommon for good and holy Christians to go through periods of spiritual dryness, of darkness and of doubt. Some call it the “desert experience”. Others refer to it as the Dark NIght (both in the sensory sense and in the spiritual sense). It is understood to be time of purification.
We have the Psalms to illustrate that to us—with their times of praise and temple worship and then their times of suffering and seeking God in moments of trial. We all know of the Psalm 23 “valley of darkness”, but so beautifully expressed also is the whole of Psalm 84-—”when they go through the Bitter Valley they make it a place of springs”.
It is the testimony of our lives and how we endure with God’s grace—as St.Paul writes: “all is grace”.
I think now especially of Fr. Walter Czisek as he writes of his 23 years in the Russian Gulag-—and Fr. Van Than as he smuggled his letters out to his people while suffering and imprisoned in Viet Nam.
Each of us is given that measure which God in His mysterious and wonderful will has designed for us. For some, it will be much easier than for others and we don’t know why this is so—we only know that it is.
Mother Teresa may not have had a “mask” or a “cloak” as much as it may have been God’s will to conceal from the world at large the true measure of her holiness—a sort of mini-version of the Mose’ veil.
We poor mortals just don’t know it all. Though we did try it once—in the Garden. It obviously failed.
"In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis tells the story of a man who didn’t think he should have to bother learning theology because he’d had some powerful personal experiences of God. Lewis acknowledges that such experiences may have profound value. Such a person, he says, may claim to know God the way someone who spends a lot of time at the beach may claim to know the ocean. But if you want to cross the ocean, a map would be more helpful than your personal memories of the beach, and if you want to journey toward a deeper knowledge of God, theology is a sort of map that will help you more than personal experience alone. Then Lewis makes the point that a map of the ocean is not opposed to experience but is rather based on the composite experience of hundreds of people, and Christian theology is not opposed to experience but is rather based on the composite experience of thousands of people. In the same way, the academic life builds on the experience of tens of thousands of people who have gone before us in any given discipline — people who have thought and written and experimented. We don’t withdraw from experience when we step into the academic world, but we do draw back into a broader view, so that we see not just our own perspective but the perspective of many thinking people all at once."
Dr. Laura Smit
Calvin College
Neither one of those say that there is any path to salvation that doesn’t go through Jesus Christ.
This “concern” about Mother Teresa seems pretty coordinated in the news sources this week. Go to Lifeaftertheoilcrash
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html
~scroll 2/3rds of the way down to an old Hitchens hitjob on Mother Teresa and this posted in breaking news no less.
What is going on?
An extreme traditionalist website that's either schismatic or within a hairs-breadth of it.
“And according to her letters, that’s where she ended up, in doubt, not like you and me, who thankfully have ended up in belief.”
I guess all of us working with the most poor, most destitute, dying and badly treated of the world without seeing much improvement have questions.
Oops. I meant to say the nuns like Mother. I can’t speak for her dying thoughts though. Those are between Mother Teresa and Jesus.
Shoot the messenger.
Are you denying that she said those things?
Would you be willing to state that anyone who said such things was preaching heresy?
Not necessarily...She maybe loved the attention, and fame...
Could it have anything to do with her having embraced Hindu gods?
>> “My words are scripture for you,” <<
Sorry. Dr. Eckleberg. It sounds like you’ve got another person like Jack Chick’s friend, “Alberto Rivera.” The only quote (presuming even it is real) from Mother Therese you’ve got is this one:
>> “I love all religions. ... If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there.” <<
That statement is hardly universalism. She doesn’t even say “stronger” or “more faithful” or “more religious,” but just “better.”
I can’t say Mother Therese did NOT have heretical notions, simply because I don’t know her very well. But you’ve made a contemptably weak case.
>> A state of confusion and uncertainty. <<
Her actions demonstrate no confusion or uncertainty. All I know is that some journalist took quotes out of context.
>> (The sin of Presumption.) <<
The sin of Presumption is the notion that commiting moral sin is okay, because it will be forgiven. Catholics absolutely, positively know whether they are in a state of grace, based on Catholic doctrine.
>> Obviously, Mother Teresa placed more faith in the teachings of the Church then in the teachings of the Scripture. <<
Any lack of faith in God is perfectly commensurate with any lack of faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church.
>> Is living in fear and anxiety about your own salvation a full and abundant life? I certainly don’t think so. So why did Jesus say this? <<
Paul said, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.”
A Presbyterian become a better Presbyterian?
An atheist...well we all have limits. :O)
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