Abbey-Roads2

Crucified with Christ. 

Crucified with Christ. 

Gerald has a post on Closed Cafeteria  with excerpts  from a Time magazine article concerning a new book comprised of Mother’s letters to her spiritual directors.  The book is titled, “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light“.  I have heard of these letters before - after the process for her beatification was well underway.

In fact, a friend working in Rome with the Missionaries of Charity, involved in the postulation research, sent me copies of some of the documents related to the process.  (I don’t know if this was permitted.)  When I first read the reports concerning the night of faith Blessed Teresa lived through, I was shocked, as were the nuns of her order.  No one, save her confessors and spiritual directors ever imagined her interior suffering.  Like her namesake, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Mother lived in complete aridity and spiritual abandonment - yet no one knew.

I believe St. Jane Frances De Chantal may also have experienced a similarly extensive night of the spirit, as did St. Vincent de Paul; however no one, save for Blessed Mother Teresa seems to have lived through these torments for as long as St. Paul of the Cross - 45 years! Garrigou-Lagrange refers to these nights as reparatory.  Hence the heroic charity of Blessed Mother Teresa - actively exercised in the apostolate - is so much the more magnified by the extraordinary fact that she lived in complete spiritual desolation - as if without faith.  It is as if her entire life was experientially  ”crucified with Christ”.  No wonder she understood so clearly the, “I thirst” Jesus uttered in darkest agony upon the cross!

This annihilation commenced when she set out to work in the streets of Calcutta, and lasted the duration of her life, save for a 5 week respite.  Here is a prayer she recited:

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone … Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated.

I’m so ashamed of my own faithless, self-indulgent, vain-glorious, selfish life.  So ashamed.  I’ll be off-line for awhile.

I believe Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta must be the greatest saint of modern times.

Holy Mother Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.