I started this post earlier this week in hopes I would get it up the day after the 10th anniversary of her death. Then Amazon delivered
Now I could tell you that I decided to wait on posting in order to have a more complete blog post. That would be a lie. Frankly, I was so riveted by the contents of the book itself that I didn't want to stop reading long enough to blog. Then my internet connection went out which forced me to spend still more time meditating on the life of this extraordinary woman. When I recommend books to my friends I generally exhibit several levels of enthusiasm from 'this particular book isn't that great but I think that you'll find what you need in it' to 'no, that belongs in your CART, not your wishlist.' I tell you without a trace of humor in my voice, I told a friend of mine yesterday to buy this book right that minute and pay for 1-day shipping. (With Amazon Prime 1-day shipping is $3.99)
And so I post this in honor of the 51st anniversary of Our Lord's "call within a call" to Mother Teresa to reach out to the poorest of the poor on September 10, 1946.
I've resisted developing an attachment to Mother Teresa...there I said it.....think of me what you will, but I am shallow and vain enough to not want to do what everyone else is doing because everyone else is doing it. Thankyouverymuch. But I am fighting a losing battle as the Holy Spirit continues to use Mother Teresa's words and example to speak to me. So as the Catholic blogosphere pauses to remember Mother Teresa let me add my grateful thanks to our Lord for her life, her unspeakable courage, and her continued efforts (whether she is aware of them or not) to reduce even me to humility and to encourage even me to embrace suffering. If all Mother Teresa did was selflessly devote herself to acts of charity and love in India and found the Missionaries of Charity, she would still be worthy of sainthood. But the more I learn about her, the more I realize she ranks with one of the great Catholic mystics of all-time. Mother Teresa wrote with acts of her life more about the Gospel of our Lord and the meaning of the words "Take up your cross and follow me" than all of the Doctors of the Church combined.
I've meditated on why it is that Mother Teresa's life and writings should speak to me in a way that St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or St. Teresa of Avila, of St. John of the Cross do not. I wonder if it is not that Mother Teresa is more like me than they were. No I don't mean that I am in her league with respect to virtue or wisdom or charity or any other good Christian attribute that you'd like to name. What I mean is that like me, she was a mother. Not in the same way that I am, but a mother of all of her Missionaries of Charity Sisters nonetheless. She also had to straddle the difficult balance of the giving of oneself in practical temporal ways and the need and desire to shut oneself up in prayer. Even though she was a vowed religious woman, I think that my life as a wife and mother and temporal duties of that life and my desires as a Christian have some tiny parallel to her life.
And although I am sure that this posthumous examination of her faith by those who would tear it down has just begun (and in some cases gotten fresh wind in the sails) I am intensely weary of it. Here is a woman who (with the approval of her confessor) made a private vow to deny Jesus nothing that He asked of her and then spent the rest of her life listening intensely to the smallest leading of His so that she might instantly do His will. Some, who did not know her and have judged her based on a few quotes of hers taken out of the context of all of her life and words are saying that she was not even Christian; yet her life was the embodiment of the advice she gave to so many. In her words " "Today I made a new prayer --Jesus I accept whatever you give---and I give whatever you take." On Holy Cards that portrayed Ecce Homo with the words from Psalm 68 "I looked for one that would comfort me and I found none," she would write, "Be the one." One of her sisters (Sister Fatima Sebastian) describes her as a woman "totally, passionately, madly in love with Jesus." I wonder how many of those who would question the Christianity of Mother Teresa would themselves be described in those words. I wonder how many of us, could say "I want with my whole will only Jesus" and then have our lives stand as the sole evidence of the Truth of that statement?
Yes, she wrote about lacking the "feeling" of faith and some are using that to describe her as faithless or even, incredibly, as an atheist. But listen to what else she wrote:
No Father, I am not alone.--I have His darkness--I have His pain--I have a terrible longing for God--to love and not to be loved. I know I have Jesus--in that unbroken union--for my mind is fixed on Him and in Him alone, in my will.
Cough. Lots of atheists I know write like that. During the early years of her darkness, before she began to understand and to embrace it. Before she began to see some of the purpose for it, her spiritual director, Father Neuner, wrote about that transformation:
It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special share she had in Jesus' passion...Thus we see that the darkness was actually the mysterious link that united her to Jesus. It is the contact of intimate longing for God. Nothing else can fill her mind. Such longing is possible only through God's hidden presence. We cannot long for something that is not intimately close to us. Thirst is more than the absence of water. It is not experienced by stones, but only by living beings that depend on water.
Mother Teresa radiated Christ to all who knew her. She was the living gospel of Christ and His dedicated servant. Someone said of her:
She seemed to delight in you. It was not something of charity that was burdensome, which destroys the dignity of the poor, but it was something that she delighted in....You had the sense that she considered it a privilege to do this. She comforted you when you were sad. She encouraged you when you were doubting whether you could do something.
Her work was a witness to the power and light and love of Christ within her. It was her complete and total surrender to His Will that enabled Him to work so powerfully through her. And I am humbled and am forced to ask, does my life reflect such a total surrender? It should. What could He do through each of us, if we allowed Him to use us without consulting us? (Another of Mother Teresa's bits of wisdom.) If one totally surrendered woman could accomplish so much for the Kingdom, what could a billion such souls accomplish?
But what about her gifts to me? Well as I have previously mentioned, I have had some rough patches in my personal life in the last few years. Some months ago I took the time to go on a silent retreat in an attempt to make some sense of the pain in my life. The Lord threw me the lifeline I needed but He used the hands of Mother Teresa in a very significant way to toss it my way. Her letter to the Missionaries of Charity which outlines some of her understand of her "call within a call" was just what I needed to help me remember....probably more profoundly than I have ever realized it before....that I was truly loved by God. Perhaps God used her, because like her (but for different reasons) I have had a kind of "Dark Night" of my own. Here is some of that letter:
Be careful of all that can block that personal contact with the living Jesus. Devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes, to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more--He longs for you. He misses you when you don't come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don't feel worthy. When not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes -- He is the one who always accepts you....
...Why does Jesus say "I thirst"? What does it mean? Something so hard to explain in words-- if you remember anything from Mother's letter, remember this--"I thirst" is something much deeper than Jesus just saying "I love you." Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you --you can't begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him.
I know that there are some who think that Mother Teresa's wishes to have her correspondence burned should have been honored. She was afraid that her correspondence might turn some away from Jesus who she loved so passionately. I am glad that the Vatican disagrees with her. Her heroic surrender to the will of God and the wisdom that came from it will help many souls (mine very much included) come closer to God. As she approached death and her sisters would say "Mother, don't leave us. We can't live without you." She would reply "Don't worry. Mother can do so much more for you when I am in heaven." I am sure that meant that she would joyfully pray for the Church on earth, she also said:
If I ever become a Saint --I will surely be one of "darkness." I will continually be absent from Heaven--to light the light of those in darkness on hearth--
I suspect that in her humility, she would never have understood that her letters would form an important part of the work she would do after her death. I do know that no matter how she felt about having her letters published, that she would have submitted totally to her vow of religious obedience and accepted the ruling of Church authorities that these letters would be helpful to the faithful and should be published.
Besides Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light I highly recommend the following:
Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with Mother Teresa by Susan Conroy. I like this book because it has a good blend of background information as well as those wonderful bits of wisdom of Mother Teresa's.
Works of Love are Works of Peace: Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Missionaries of Charity by Michael Collopy. On the surface this book looks like just a coffee table book of pictures of Mother Teresa but tucked away in the back of the book is a copy of the Missionaries of Charity prayer book.
"Pray for me, that I not loosen my grip on the hand of Jesus"
Mother Teresa
ETA: I had more to say here.
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