The Dark Night of Teresa

Teresa of Calcutta wrote to her spritual confidant the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, the following in September of 1979:

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 quote along with others has recently been published, something Teresa herself did not want saying that if they were published the world would "think more of me—less of Jesus." But the path to sainthood involves the glare of publicity and a recent Time magazine cover story Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith is part of that path for Teresa of Calcutta. The problem is that Teresa's letters reveal her to have struggled with doubts in her faith.

Over at On Faith, the panelist are being asked of Mother Teresa's letters, "Does this make you think more or less of her? To what extent is doubt a part of religious faith?"

Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu writes we live by faith not by certainty writing

Mother Teresa wonderfully was no plaster cast saint. She has helped to affirm many who are passing through this period of desolation and dryness when God seems so remote. St Theresa of Avila after one such bout cried out in frustration to God, ’No wonder your friends are so few given how you treat them!’ My regard for Mother Teresa has been enhanced.

Theologian Martin Marty writes Mother Teresa and the Experience of Faith writes of a less than sunny experience of God's presence saying

The absence of the experience of God or the experience of God is a classic theme with which many can identify. I once wrote a whole book, "A Cry of Absence," taking off from writing by perhaps the most noted theologian in 20th century Catholicism. He wanted us to concentrate on a "wintry sort of spirituality," and not just market summery, sunny, everything-solved spirituality. Such wintry sorts are all over the Bible and the pages of Christian history.

And the Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church Wall Street, Jim Cooper writes without doubt, we don't grow saying

Doubt is the fertilizer of faith. We don’t grow without it. I would never presume that Mother Teresa’s faith was sealed with certainty. These thoughts of hers make her in my mind all the more human, and all the more essential a religious figure – one in a never-ending relationship with God. Doubt is in and of itself dialogue in that relationship.

All of the panel's responses are here Mother Teresa and doubt.

I have preached on a similar theme speaking of doubt as a sign of an active faith with the sermons:
From Doubt to Shalom,
The Presence of a Hidden God,
The Darkness of God, and perhaps most full in
The Faith that Lives in You.

So will Teresa of Calcutta be sainted? Without a doubt. And in the process her letters will come to give comfort to others rather than cause even more reason to doubt the God she served in the slums of Calcutta.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor