Monday, August 27, 2007

The Mother Theresa no one knew

except for her close spiritual confidants.

With a swing of the thurible to Rocco, there's a new book forthcoming from Doubleday regarding Mother Theresa of Calcutta's spiritual dryness during nearly five decades of life.

As the article points out, she was able to do what she did with an intense absence of God's presence. For her, it was the purification that she needed to become the living saint and icon of Christ to a world greatly in need of God's love.

Her story, her dryness, will be and is an inspiration for all those who think that connection with God equals a great elation of feeling and spirit. That simply is not the case. I think that the path to holiness is as much in the humdrum of daily life as it is in the occasional moments of intense spiritual joy and/or agony.

What a unique and wonderful journey that she was on, and from which she continues to teach us all.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, pray for us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, the book looks amazing - you can preorder on Amazon and I'm sure other places as well.

Already in the secular media they are misconstruing her letters claiming that she had no faith and that she didn't believe in God. These facts - according to the Time article - are why she wanted the letters destroyed.

What is annoying about this - and there are so many things that are annoying - is that clearly the author of the article doesn't understand Catholic spirituality and the phrases that the saints have used to describe this dryness and this dark night of the soul.
They are ignorant - which is pitiable - but they didn't do any research or homework to understand - and that is incompetant. The other, less charitable, possibility is that this is an agenda.

What they won't ask is - OK - accept she had no faith - she did more with joy which continues to this day with no faith - then the progressives or public non-believers have done in a century. They won't ask that.

We as believers have a wonderful opportunity to read these letters BUT more importantly see the joy that is in her sisters to this day as they continue to care for the poorest of the poor around the world - to look into the face of holiness and let that face prompt us to love more like Jesus for His sake.