Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

It's been a crazy week around here. I feel like sometime on Monday the rocket sled I didn't know I was standing on took off at warp speed and I have been hanging off the back trying to climb back on ever since. The big topic of the week on that homeschooling forum was Mary...again...and it ended up in a "discussion" about how Catholics were clearly in violation of scripture if they knelt and prayed with a statue in sight. It was such a productive conversation. "Do too." "Do NOT!" You DO SO!!"....etc. I have suggested repeatedly that those who wish to see me leave the Catholic Church would make more headway if they didn't waste their time trying to convince me that I am really doing something that I adamantly hold that I am not doing rather than just  starting with an area that I of acknowledged disagreement. Anyway...as the conversation was winding to a close I put up a summary of what I believe with respect to the bowing down to statues issue and it seemed like it fit here. Perhaps it will make up for the paucity of blogging for the rest of the week.

First let me start by sharing my personal experience. Today is Ash Wednesday (but who knows when I will finish this and post it) and because of a commitment that I made to my pastor, I had to be present (before and after) at all of the services where ashes where distributed and for the two Masses. My home is not terribly close to our church and at some times of the day it can take 30 minutes to drive that distance and there isn’t much point in driving home instead of waiting at the church for 60+ minutes for the next service. Anyway, I had considerable time to spend at church today without any assigned occupation.

In the early morning, it was very cold and windy outside (although Minnesota residents would beg to differ) and I do not do cold without a great deal of whining. As soon as I was able, I made a beeline for the church to pray.  I had just over an hour to pray in the quiet church…what a blessing! I went to my favorite prayer spot in the church (see the x on my diagram) and I knelt in prayer. Could I have prayed elsewhere? Sure. Would our Lord have heard me? Of course! Was it special to me because it was in the quiet of the church? Yes. The church itself was an aid to my devotion. Sitting in the church it was easier for me to meditate on our pastor and his needs, the needs of the congregation, and even to pray and mediate on the Sacrifice that Jesus made for me and for them. After praying for some time, being the mortal human that I am…or perhaps, just not advanced enough in prayer….I found my mind wandering. 

At this point it is necessary to describe the floor plan of my church. In the front and center of our Church is the tabernacle where the Eucharist is kept in order to be able to take Holy Communion to those who are unable to come to church. That is the central focus of the church and the architecture (early 20th century) supports that. You can see behind the Tabernacle though and there is a walkway that goes behind it that connects the vesting rooms (see diagram). In the wall behind the Tabernacle is a niche on each side and in those niches are statues. From the spot where I customarily sit, you can see a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the really crummy pictures I scanned from our church directory, you can see a little arch of brown behind the ficus (yes really) on the left. That’s where the statue is. The other niche, which I cannot see from my favorite spot, is one of Mary.

X marks my favorite place to kneel and pray

1. Tabernacle

2. Sacred Heart of Jesus statue

3. Mary statue

4. Altar

5. Ambo (pulpit) 

6 Presider's chair

(Sorry that it's such a bad picture...it came from our church directory.)

Back to my mind wandering. Today there were no plants or flowers of any kind in the church because it is the start of Lent which is a “desert time” liturgically; thus, no flowers or plants. This had the effect of making the statue more visible that it is customarily. As I knelt in prayer and my mind wandered, I caught sight of the statue and I began to think about the origin of the image portrayed in the statue. I thought about St. Mary Margaret Alocoque and how she had been written off as insane and a kook for most of her life. She was horribly maligned by her fellow sisters in her convent. I thought about France at the time she was living and how the awesome holiness of the Lord had been emphasized almost to the exclusion of the Love and Mercy of Our Lord. I thought about how her perseverance in spreading the message of the Mercy of Our Lord was a gift to me. That without her, I might not have the privilege of praying in church in preparation for receiving Holy Communion as a lay person on an ordinary day. (Holy Communion was received only infrequently by the laity at the time because of their sense of unworthiness.) These and many other thoughts went through my mind as I knelt in prayer before that statue. And as a result of that meditation I returned again to my prayer to Our Lord in thanksgiving for those who persevered in obedience and for the Precious Gift of His Mercy that welcomes me even when I am unworthy. Was I praying TO the statue? No. Was I as unmistakably close to the statue as the people in the picture? No. But I was close enough that if someone had seen my gaze they might have snapped MY picture and put it on the internet as further proof of Catholic-statue-worshipping. It was an aid to my devotion. Period. It was an aid both to meditation and prayer. Could I have been closer and done the same thing and had it look more “incriminating”? Probably. Does the distance from the statue matter in this case? If I am 10 yards from the statue am I not bowing to it, but I am if I am 5 feet from it but using it in the SAME WAY as if I was 10 yards away? 50 yards?

Later that day while I was waiting for a service to finish, I occupied myself by pulling weeds in the church’s landscaping. At one point, I was down on my knees in front of a statue of St. Francis looking for weeds. I looked up and realized where I was and almost looked around to see if anyone had a camera. Fortunately, I was all by myself and there were no Jesus-is-Lord spies there. I also took a few minutes to think about the life of St. Francis, the joy with which he served Our Lord and what He taught us about appreciating God’s creation. Again, a statue served as a visual reminder that drew me into meditation about God’s gifts to us.

Now contrast this aid to devotion to my behavior at another time. Our church has an Adoration chapel. What that means is that the Eucharist is exposed in a monstrance 24 hours/day. People at our church take turns spending an hour before the Eucharist in prayer and Adoration. We do this in response to the scripture in which Jesus asks His disciples, “Could you spend an hour with me in prayer?” On Tuesday mornings, I rise in the wee hours of the morning and head to church. As soon as the person I relieve leaves, I veil myself, remove my shoes, and I prostrate myself in Adoration and Worship before the Blessed Sacrament. (I wait until the other person leaves because I really don’t want anyone thinking that I do this for show.) There is no question in my mind what I am doing. This isn’t an aid to Worship. This isn’t to help me think about Our Lord.  This is Worship. It isn’t the primary act of worship which is the Mass but in a spiritual way, I unite this time that I spend in Adoration with the Mass.

Now I am not a Hebrew scholar but I do know that there is more than one word for “bow” used in the OT and since I DO bow in worship and it looks different both in my heart and in my body, I can’t help but think that the Hebrews were lucky enough to have a word for “bow” that looks like what my “bow” does in Adoration and one that also translates “bow” that looks like what happened in the church and in the garden. I have had people that I trust tell me that my understanding is correct.

That’s just my experience and indicative of nothing except how my understanding of scripture plays out in my devotional life. If that leaves me open to the charge of intellectual duplicity because it “looks like worship but isn’t” well then I stand convicted. It is my opinion that it “looks like worship” because of the very different understanding of worship that exists outside of the Catholic Church.  For the Catholic the central and most important act of worship is what Jesus declared it to be in the New Covenant at the Last Supper. Catholics believe that during the Mass we enter into the eternal worship of heaven itself.  It is not hyperbole when a Catholic compares marital intimacy to receiving Holy Communion. Holy Communion is the Sacrament that renews the New Covenant just as marital intimacy renews the marital covenant.

That leads me to my next part. There has been a lot of discussion [on that forum] about this picture:

This picture was originally found on The Sacred Immaculate Heart of Satan page on the Jesus-is-Lord website.

In conjunction with these verses:

Exodus 20:4-5 “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers' wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation”

Deuteronomy 5: 8-10  “You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishments for their fathers' wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation but bestowing mercy, down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

So first, I would like to ask the reader if they pray in their closet? Well why not? Sacred Scripture says CLEARLY….in no uncertain terms, from the words of our Savior himself….

Matthew 6:6 “But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

But you say….the context of the passage in Matthew is that we aren’t supposed to do things for show! It didn’t mean that you should literally go into a closet.

Yes I say, and the context of the passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy is that we should not worship things that are not the Creator of the Universe. And bowing in and of itself, is not worship.

And so we are left with a debate like all the other debates that have split Christianity into countless and counting denominations. Each Christian reserving unto him or herself the right to interpret Sacred Scripture as seems best to that individual. Is that what Jesus intended? Should scripture be interpreted by an individual or within a community? Which community? By whose authority? How does a new Christian determine which church is the correct church if they have not developed appropriate spiritual maturity?

And where did this book that we call the Bible come from? It did not drop from Mount Sinai leather bound with gilt edges. The first books of the New Testament were not even written for decades after Pentecost…..the Apostles guided the first Christians you say….well that’s true. But were there more than 12 communities of Christians? What did the communities without Apostles do? Did the Apostles lay hands on some and bestow them with the same kind of authority? If they did, why doesn’t that authority continue to this day? And who has it? Who picked the books of the Bible? When? The New Testament canon was not finalized until almost 400 AD. That’s over 300 years without a Bible. Some churches before that preach as scripture from books that did not make the New Testament canon, and some churches refused to teach as scripture from some books that did not make it into the canon. Most churches were able to afford only a few of the books anyway. How did Christians pass on the faith in the centuries that followed the adoption of the canon without their own copies of the Bible (that they couldn’t read since most were illiterate)? And why is it that the same people who had the authority to set the canon that is accepted by so many Protestants without question, not have the authority to explain what it means?

The canon set at the Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) was set by the authority of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and the men that were so full of the Holy Spirit that they were able to establish the canon that remains to this day not only believed that using visual aids to devotion was acceptable, they also believed that same Church rightly reserved to herself the authority to provide a definitive interpretation of those same scriptures.

The daily catechism time I have with my children usually consists of prayer, scripture (the day's Mass readings), and a read-aloud time from something religious....most often a biography of a saint. Currently we are reading from Lay Seige to Heaven: A Novel About St. Catherine of Siena by Loius deWohl. These biographies are an exceptionally good way of teaching my children about the faith. I know this because I learn so much about the faith. I think it was Benedict XVI who said that the best interpretation of scripture is to be found in the lives of the Saints. If it wasn't the Holy Father that said it, it must have been someone else really smart because....well I agree with it so much. Anyway back to the learning part.

Too many times I think that we think we are being holy when we can pick up our fingers, point them,  and accurately discern the sin that our neighbor has committed....did you notice how I dragged you right into this?....all right....Let me re-phrase that. Too many times, I think I am being holy when I can accurately discern sin in someone else's life. It's so darn easy isn't it? They are too focused on money or they gossip or lust or are ungenerous with their time or their money. But in the end, most of the time they know they are sinning and quite frankly don't need hypocritical me stepping in to do the Holy Spirit's job. And in the end, my helpfully pointing out where the poor sinner needs to straighten up usually just ends in ME being accused of being judgmental...can you imagine? Truthfully, I don't go around pointing such things out but I do stuggle with the temptation to do so from time to time. But perhaps it is because I am so easily tempted to uncharitableness and judgementalism that I was so struck by St. Catherine of Siena. Here was a woman who was so intensely devoted to Our Lord and so deeply committed to rooting out all worldliness in her life that she simply radiated the Holy Spirit. Apparently she inspired people to abandon their sinful lives by get this....just being holy. She didn't walk into a room and tell a priest that he was violating his vow of poverty by the richness of his possessions. She didn't stand on a street corner, point her finger, and tell the notorious libertine that he should leave his married mistress. No. She just sat and listened or watched or prayed (silently) and the next thing  you know these people were making a beeline for the confessional, selling their possessions and giving them to the poor, and abandoning their worldly ways. Not because she said a word about it to them but because she gave herself completely to Our Lord and trusted the Holy Spirit in her to speak to those around her instead of opening her mouth herself.

It's easy to convince ourselves....oh all right....I don't have a hard time convincing myself that I have an obligation to "tell" someone who is in sin the error of his/her ways and indeed there are probably times when we are called to speak up. But that's the easy way out I think and most of the time it should be our prayer and our personal holiness that allows the Holy Spirit to work through us wordlessly that should be doing the "talking." It is certainly at the heart of what St. Francis of Assisi meant when he said, "Preach always. If necessary, use words." and in the example of St. Catherine of Siena.

And desire nothing else but only Thee.

Let me hate myself and love Thee

And do all things for the sake of Thee.

Let me humble myself, and exalt thee,

And think of nothing else but Thee.

Let me die to myself, and live in Thee,

And take whatever happens as coming from Thee,

Let me forsake myself and walk after Thee,

And ever desire to follow Thee.

Let me flee from myself, and turn to Thee,

That so I may merit to be defended by Thee.

Let me fear for myself, let me fear Thee,

And be amongst those who are chosen by Thee.

Let me distrust myself, and trust in Thee,

And ever obey for the love of Thee.

Let me cleave to nothing but Thee,

And ever be poor for the sake of Thee.

Look upon me, that I may love Thee;

Call me, that I may see Thee

And forever possess Thee. Amen

I think I will add at this point that the whole concept of a Catholic "Holy Hour" comes from Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and his rebuke of the disciples "So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?" And as a convert to the Catholic Church, once I got over the whole "praying to Saints" thing and really understood in implications of the "Communion of Saints" it never occurred to me that I shouldn't be praying for Jesus! Another non-Catholic contributer asked me to help her make sense of why I would be praying for someone or something in the past and so I fleshed it out still more...

Changing the outcome isn't the only reason to pray. Because of our location in time, we know that the outcome of say....an early Christian martyr being thrown to the lions, will be the lion having lunch.




So in the sense that God is not going to deliver that Christian brother or sister from the lions, it makes more "sense" to pray for something in the here and now. (And please don't misunderstand me, just because I pray for those who have gone before me doesn't mean that I don't spend the majority of my prayer time focused on here and now sorts of prayers. I am a creature of this body and as such I am often focused....probably overly so....on the temporal.) But just like Jesus, who prayed for the cup to be taken away from Him but WASN'T DELIVERED there is perhaps a greater need for the Kingdom at stake and what Jesus needed, the martyr needed and I NEED , is the grace to endure the present trials and offer them for the Glory of God.

So continuing with the death of our martyr. We know that the witness these brothers and sisters in faith had by meeting their death with grace...even JOY!...spoke to the hearts of those who saw it. Their deaths won souls for the Kingdom but it wasn't just their death but the Grace of God that people saw in those moments. Why NOT pray for them? And my pray for them changes me too as I become more aware of the reality of the Kingdom of God and of the temporary nature of this life and my trials.

It comes back to the whole belief in ONE body. I am apart from these brothers and sisters in time and space but because we are all part of the Body of Christ and because Jesus is Divine and the same yesterday, tomorrow and forever, and is present in ALL places and all times I am still just as much a part of them as they are of me. You see it doesn't make any sense to me to say of that God can answer our prayers for our brothers and sisters in India because distance is no obstacle for Him but that He can't answer our prayers for our brothers and sisters facing a Roman executioner because time....well that's too much of a barrier for God. Is the same God present then as now? If that same God is present now AND then, if He is present in all times and places, and if He hears my prayers....then what barrier is a little thing like TIME?! He created it!

By the same token, I don't see the death of the physical body as any sort of barrier to my prayers either. Jesus has only one Body and we are united within it. Freedom in Christ? There it is! We are only temporarily limited by these bodies but our souls are not. Not by sin, not by the bonds of time and space because we have become souls bound for heaven. That's liberation! Life in Christ? Yes truly!! Life beyond what we perceive. We are alive now and forever because of Christ and His Sacrifice and the death of our bodies does not separate us from the Living Body of Christ.

Stay tuned....part III is coming.

If you followed a link to this post, part one is here. Part three is here.  

It never ceases to amaze me how a small throw-away comment grows and takes on a life of its own on an internet forum. It started innocently enough. We were having the "standard discussion" about praying in communion with the Saints and I explained for what feels like the fifty-zillionth time that commanded to pray for each other, the saints are not dead, and we are all one body when I encountered an objection I had never heard before.

There is a very big difference. Scripture tells us to 'pray for each other.' Do you pray for the saints that you ask to pray for you?

Well I answered that yes I do. And another Catholic contributor answered that she does too and she added that sometimes she prays for Jesus too. That intrigued most of the participants in the conversation but it offended at least one who demanded that this practice be defended on "biblical" grounds. So I answered:

When I pray for someone, I am communicating with God. God is eternal and omnitemporal (outside of time). I might be stuck here in time but He is not and therefore, my prayers are not.

I can pray for ANY-old-body that I want. I pray for the martyrs of all times (some of whom became Saints and many of whom are just saints and I don't just pray for the Catholic ones either), I pray for the monks who watched over Sacred Scripture, I pray for people from history that I meet in history books, I pray for people that I've never met that have struck me deeply for whatever reason. There is a beggar that I met once outside of a market in a foreign country. She was so old and so worn and I just wanted to take her home and give her a warm bath and warm clothes....I gave her $$ instead. It was a lot but I've always wished I'd given her more. It's been almost 20 years and she's probably dead but I still pray for her. I know the Lord can see my heart. He knew before I was ever born that I would be praying for her, and I believe that He's watched her and cared for her from her birth. Not only because He loves her, but because I asked Him to. And I pray that she is safely home with Him. I sensed a deep faith in her....can't explain why that is, I just did. And if she is no longer in need of my prayers, I certainly trust the Lord to take care of someone else in her name. Open the floodgates of heaven! Thank God, He is not limited by my lack of knowledge when I pray.

Pray isn't about controlling an outcome. Prayer is about God's Grace both for the pray-er and the pray-ee. It doesn't matter that the history books have recorded the temporal events. We might know that someone's prayers isn't going to change the outcome of [terribly difficult situation] in this place and time but what they NEED is God's Grace to persevere. Isn't that what we all need the most anyway? Is there any reason why God can't hear the prayers I have 'today" and send His Grace to help someone 'then'? I don't see ANY reason why that can't happen. **I** am limited. He is not and through Him, my prayers are not.

Beyond that, when I pray for someone else I am opening myself to God's action in my life. When I love them and pray for them, as myself, I invite God's movement and graces in my life. Although He commands it, God doesn't need my prayers....**I** need them.
 
And even though He had everything, was perfectly holy, Jesus asked his disciples to "keep watch with Him."

Matthew 26: 36-41) Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." 37 He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress. 38 Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. 24 Remain here and keep watch with me." 39 He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." 40 When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, "So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? 41 Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

42 Withdrawing a second time, he prayed again, "My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!" 43 Then he returned once more and found them asleep, for they could not keep their eyes open. 44 He left them and withdrew again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing again. 45 Then he returned to his disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand when the Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners.

Where the disciples prayers going to change the events that were about to unfold? I don't think so. Yet, Jesus asked for them. Is there any reason why **I** can't keep watch with Him in the Garden...other than the little technicality of me being born almost 2000 years later? So yes, I pray for Jesus. In fact, last night I spent two hours in prayer in our church chapel to "keep watch with Him" expressly because of what I see as a scriptural mandate. I pray for Him as well as thank Him and praise Him for each terrible step He took, for enduring the scourging, for enduring the mocking and the shame, for the pain, and the horror of bearing my sins. I ask for God to send Him all of the graces He needed to endure that for me. I ask God to send angels to minster to him. I ask that my tiny prayers be of some comfort to our Lord in the midst of the horror of bearing my sins. That's mostly what I pray for Jesus, but I also pray for his safety on the way to Egypt. I pray for Mary and Joseph on that journey as well. That the Lord would comfort them and provide their every need. I pray for the Apostles as they meet in council and travel on their missionary journeys. As I meditate on Scripture, I pray and the list of things to pray for is endless!! Do I know that the Lord will provide/did provide for them? Darn tootin'!! In the same I know that the Lord will provide for those I pray for in the here and now. Doesn't stop me from praying though.

So was that a good enough answer?....stay tuned, there's more!

If you followed a link to this post part two is here. Part three is here.

Pray:

Pronunciation:

ˈprā

Function:

verb

Etymology:

Middle English, from Anglo-French prier, praer, preier, from Latin precari, from prec-, prex request, prayer; akin to Old High German frāga question, frāgēn to ask, Sanskrit pṛcchati he asks

transitive verb 1 : entreat, implore —often used as a function word in introducing a question, request, or plea <pray be careful> 2 : to get or bring by praying intransitive verb 1 : to make a request in a humble manner 2 : to address God or a god with adoration, confession, supplication, or thanksgiving

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.