By Jean Kim-Butcher

TIME magazine’s September 3 feature on Mother Teresa’s ‘crisis of faith’ can be dismissed as yet another media splash attacking Christianity; or it can be an opportunity to explore some of the most profound mysteries of the Christian faith – issues such as the redemptive quality of suffering, the paradoxical nature of faith and the goal of authentic love.

Gift of pain

In 21st century North America, we have distanced ourselves from the potential good that may derive in and through suffering. As authors Philip Yancey and Paul Brand put it, in the title of a recent book: “Pain [is] the gift that nobody wants.”

This is not to say that a person in the midst of utter suffering can avoid grappling with the age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Nor can we readily grasp the rhyme or reason attached to tragedy and pain. Very often there may be none, or at least none that is apparent.

In this regard Mother Teresa could say: “Suffering in itself is nothing; but suffering shared with Christ’s Passion is a wonderful gift.” Only in the light of the cross, that is, can we even begin to make sense of suffering – and yet there we may indeed make a beginning.

Mother Teresa considered it her vocation to comfort the crucified Jesus present in the ‘poorest of the poor.’ She did not desire to only serve the poor but to become one with the poor in whom she beheld Christ.

Presence of God

Poverty was something she chose in being a nun, and suffering for her did not consist in material want, relationships gone askew, ambitions thwarted or crippling physical ailments. Rather, her pain arrived unexpectedly (as it usually does) through the loss of the one possession she cherished most – the presence of God.

“There is much suffering in the world,” Mother declared. “I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.”

Surely this woman’s sense of being abandoned by God placed her in the company of the poorest of the poor. But perhaps her own grave deprivation served as her most valuable resource to authentically and compassionately identify with the deprivation of others.

Scandalous secret

Mother Teresa’s suffering has been publicized, however, as a scandalous secret. And why? Maybe it was modesty (a virtue which we see clearly, given her request to have her letters destroyed), that led her to offer up her pain to God alone.

Atheists may accuse Mother Teresa of being hypocritical by masking her doubt and torment with smiles and prayers. What if instead it was her discretion and selfless concern for others that allowed her to be consistent in her message of joy and service to them? The dialogue between spouses in negotiating terms and expressing needs is a private affair.

Mother Teresa, unlike an openly complaining spouse, protected the realm of the intimate between her and her Beloved. And to a world desperate to hear the truth about a loving and ever-present God, she put aside her own burdens to give it voice. This was probably not considered an astounding sacrifice in her eyes, rather an obedience to scriptural teaching – like fasting done in secret (Matthew 6:16-18).

Lessons for us?

What lessons, then, do we learn about God from Mother Teresa’s experience? The psychologists propose that Mother Teresa had a self-abnegating syndrome. Atheists contend that she had dug herself into a deep pit of religious profession from which she could not get out.

Continue article >>

However, neither view faces up to the sheer longevity of her ‘condition.’ The schedule and output of Mother Teresa’s everyday life, along with her extreme encounter with poverty and despair, would lead any well-intentioned and hard-working person to succumb to bitterness, depression and ultimately, burnout.

Her writings to her confessor are evidence of the fragility of her spirit; she, like all of us, had to wrestle with the intangible, enigmatic character of faith. To draw conclusions about Mother Teresa’s life from these writings alone would be to ignore and thus negate the fruits of her struggle. How, after all, can one judge the process of someone’s labour apart from its results (Luke 6:43)?

Another aspect of faith which is admittedly vexing is dealing with God’s silence. For Mother Teresa, it seemed that not only was God silent – but that he was absent. What Jesus offered on the cross is enough to hold onto belief. And yet, we desire more. The Lord knows what each of us needs, and in what measure.

For Mother Teresa, an early vision of Jesus giving himself to her proved enough to sustain her throughout a lifetime of intense service, accompanied as that seems to have been by an equally intense interior struggle.

It is not in the longing for God’s presence that upholds us; rather the hope that we will be filled one day. Yet perfect oneness with the Bridegroom is not for this side of heaven.

“Love to be real, it must cost – it must hurt – it must empty us of self.” Is it not surprising that one who not only spoke but embodied these words be upheld as a model of Christian love by believers (of many confessions)?

This is especially true in our modern day, where we are constantly urged simply to do what feels good or right.

Though the letters printed in TIME speak of Mother Teresa’s feeling unwanted, empty, unloved – indeed, tormented – she nonetheless persisted in offering herself fully to the God who seemed so out of reach.

She wished that he have a “free hand” with her, that she would love him “as he has never been loved before”; his happiness was her sole desire, and for the sake of others’ salvation she was willing even to “suffer . . . for all eternity, if this [were] possible.”

No, it was not that this woman needed to punish herself senselessly or that her service to the poor kept her distracted from her internal pain, much less that she was delusional.

It was rather that she grasped the truth about the nature of divine love, that it consists in a complete emptying of self in order to give to the other.

St. Francis of Assisi leads us to this kind of love: “O Master, grant that I may never seek . . . so much to be loved as to love with all my soul.” Mother Teresa stated, “Of my free will, dear Jesus, I shall follow You . . . at any cost to myself and out of pure love of you.”

“Crisis of faith, is the misleading term that TIME uses to describe the sufferings that beset Mother Teresa for half a century. A crisis, after all, is usually a short-lived, intense period of time, a threshold moment or crossroads experience.

Mother Teresa’s newly published letters may be seen as a travelogue of her journey. A journey of a deepening faith and an extraordinary love, indeed a “progress in holiness.” A quest to which, in fact, we are all invited. In commissioning us to step forth whether for the first time or for the thousandth time, Mother Teresa, with her signature brevity and practicality, speaks these words: “Be not afraid. God loves you and wants us to love one another as he loves us . . . yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

What was ‘The Secret Life of Mother Teresa’ of which TIME speaks? Ask Mother Teresa, who already revealed that “My secret is quite simple – I pray!”

October 2007