Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith:
A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist.”
A lot will be made of this on both sides of the pro- and anti-God sides of the aisle, but I can’t help just feel a little sad for the woman, who clearly yearned to feel the presence of God in her life, and also feel a little humbled by the fact that she continued for fifty-some years without it.
Via Gerry Canavan.
How very powerful, though, as a tool for comfort to people who feel the same way. The Bible is littered with references of people feeling alienated and alone. Too often, I think, we are overwhelmed by images of people who appear to be completely committed, never wavering, and wholly consumed by their faith. It’s always made me feel like a pretender, and reading about Mother Teresa’s own struggles will mean more to me than some of the pap that’s on bookshelves today.