Mother Teresa's Faith

TIME wallows in the letters that supposedly debunk Mother Teresa's unwavering faith in God.

A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

This is a gift for the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-religious lib media.

The saintly Mother Teresa didn't believe in God. She had "spiritual dryness."

Here's an example:

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

Woo hoo!!!

Mother Teresa was a hypocrite, a fraud, a liar.

In 1948, [Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa], ventures, Teresa finally woke up, although she could not admit it. He likens her to die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: "There was a huge amount of cognitive dissonance," he says. "They thought, 'Jesus, the Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I'm not supposed to think that. It means my life is meaningless.' They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone. And I think once the mainspring is gone, it cannot be repaired." That, he says, was Teresa.

Right.

Mother Teresa was an atheist, one of those rare atheists that pray to God incessantly.

I have a problem with this:

Come Be My Light is that rare thing, a posthumous autobiography that could cause a wholesale reconsideration of a major public figure — one way or another. It raises questions about God and faith, the engine behind great achievement, and the persistence of love, divine and human. That it does so not in any organized, intentional form but as a hodgepodge of desperate notes not intended for daylight should leave readers only more convinced that it is authentic — and that they are, somewhat shockingly, touching the true inner life of a modern saint.

This isn't a "posthumous autobiography."

Mother Teresa wanted many of these very personal letters to be destroyed.

I don't think it's fair to pick at a deceased person's private writings and suggest that they tell her story. She has no opportunity to provide full context, explain herself and lend insight into what her thoughts meant to her, their significance in her earthly life's journey.

Do they tell part of her story? Yes, an important part.

They reveal that she struggled with her faith. They reveal that she had doubts. They reveal that she was human.

Contrary to Hitchens and others dancing on the grave of Mother Teresa's belief in God, I think the letters illustrate the intensity and depth of her faith. Like Jesus, she was the suffering servant.

In spite of her questions and uncertainty and personal pain, she never let go of God. She trusted Him.

I contend that no believer can get through life without doubts and feelings of being abandoned by God. It's not an indication of flawed beliefs or a lack of faith.

Doubting is part of the process of believing.


About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

(Matthew 27:46)