Well, i have to say the news about Mother Teresa's "darkness" and feeling the absence of God through her entire ministry was a little shocking to me. I dont know that it is necessarily the whole concept of "the dark night" of the soul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul), because i actually think that is something that happens to a lot of missionaries or any people who are genuinely seeking God's Kingdom on earth. I think what was more shocking or just plain sad to me was the way she suffered over it and felt so lost without His presence. A lot of people, obviously, lack the presence of God in their lives. But the ones who are looking for Him, who love Him and want Him, their goal nothing more in the world than to please Him with their lives... then suffering what TIME calls "a crisis of faith." (The whole article can be found here: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415-2,00.html) It just makes me sad. Here's little Teresa, giving up her life for a ministry in India of all places to the poorest of the dirtiest poor and the dying, OF ALL PEOPLE. And then what? I mean we all know she got the highest regards from the world. She was even given a Nobel peace prize, the prize money which she promptly donated to her charities in India of course. But that wasn't what she wanted. From the entire article all I can gather is that all that woman wanted was God's company and grace to be upon her, and feeling that she couldn't find His company, not even His spirit within her own soul is something just heart-wrenching for me to read.
Anyway I had some initial, you know scientific questions about the whole thing, like some psychologist tried to explain her away as having a destructive tendency. My question about her and about other missionaries who suffer from the darkness and the feelings of loneliness is: is it too much for them - spiritually, physically, mentally - to handle? I think that missionary work is almost impossible and it begins with leaving everything you believe to be home, and then to add on the hardship of an holistic mission, giving free services to the locale, probably all the while working under a church who looks at you as second best and less important than their "bigger picture." I was discussing the depth of the charge with a friend last night. Here's a snippet:
me: and sometimes we dont understand what god is trying to accomplish through our suffering
Douglas: i also think that whoever God is all over - the Devil is all over too
yeah
me: and the devil wants us to think its just for us to suffer and nothing else
well yea
i mean jesus.
5:56 PM the devil was constantly surrounding him
Douglas: it's totally true but i get that way more in my mind than i think i do when i think of my friend, and his life... and my life and what if it were me.
yeah
me: you hear more conversations between him and satan both spirit and in people than with god
Douglas: true!
5:57 PM me: also
and i mean this with total respect for mother teresa who rests forever in christ
but the work she was doing is the most challenging work there is
and it takes everything from a person
and i think a lot of her darkness may have come from years of stress and anxiety that even the best works wouldn't please God
5:58 PM it can wring you out
Douglas: wow... true...me: i think missionaries and people who do this work that is so challenging are to begin with a little bit too idealist for the real world and they sense god as the opportunity to change everything you know what i mean? i mean we are offering the SOUL's SALVATION
thats a pretty heavy ticket to sellDouglas: right
lol
definitely
and THE LOVE the LIFE
you're representing the ultimate
me: haha yea
I KNOW!
Douglas: except like, we can be flawed, imperfect
like i have learned to be more imperfect but yet i am growing more, i don't know.
me: actually to be honest, we can be nothing but imperfect
Douglas: absolutely
me: and thats the saddest truth because we are humans
Douglas: nods
Just as she put it, Teresa was "representing the ultimate, and she did an amazing job at that. I don't think anyone can argue that Teresa fulfilled her charge to "Come be His light." I think the atheist position is silly, that Teresa's darkness is just another evidence that there is no God. I think, if anything, the fact that despite her hurting and her feelings of even being abandoned by God she persisted until the end and never renounced her faith nor the teachings of Christ as completely necessary to loving people and changing the world shows that He was working in her, even when she ceased "feeling" it. I don't think we can always expect to feel or have flourishing amazing experiences of God's presence. I know well that the Bible often says of God that He hides Himself. And there are very few people who need to see Him more than the Mother Teresa's of this planet who want nothing else except to be His light and know Him. Who can understand why God would withhold His presence from such a woman with such burning desire to know Him? I think the only pleasure I have from reading this article is in knowing that against her fears and darkness, Teresa won a million victories for the poor and sick, for the Gutters. And all those victories she won in Jesus name. I know there is no place her soul could go now except in the joyful presence of the Lord. I'm sure she knows all and can explain all, and remembers the good of her deeply surrendered life, however much she suffered. Who on earth can remember her as anything but that?
