Mother Teresa was human...

Time Magazine: Mother Teresa's crisis of faith

"Jesus has a very special love for you...as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand." — Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

A recent article in Time, in referring to a new book about Mother Teresa and her years of spiritual darkness, states:

Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God.

She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

Hopefully, this news of her intense spiritual darkness, which is not unheard of in the lives of many saints, can be used as a means to enlighten others that perseverance in living for Christ can strengthen and grow the virtues of faith, hope and charity, especially in periods of spiritual doubt or darkness.

It is undeniable that some will use these latest revelations to ridicule Mother Teresa, the faith (as we believe it), piety, virtue and religion in general - and for those, we should continue to pray. And when we might find ourselves, seemingly deserted and separated from God, suffering that horrible aridity and darkness which can appear so overwhelming at times, we can and should ask for the prayers of our saintly brothers and sisters who suffered this same darkness or worse, and who persevered - precisely because of their faith and their love of our Lord.

The Time article is here.