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?

–[By Mother Teresa] ADDRESSED TO JESUS, AT THE SUGGESTION OF A CONFESSOR, UNDATED [Link]

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p>Upon her death in 1997 it was revealed that Mother Teresa had asked that her private letters and confessions to her confessors (apparently she went from one to the next like a person in search of the right therapist) be burned so that they would never see the light of day. The Church, probably recognizing Teresa’s importance as the holiest woman in the world, overruled her request. They were also aware that any surviving notes or correspondence might be a useful part of the background investigation needed for her potential Sainthood (which there now is). Those letters have finally been revealed to the public in a new book titled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. They are so startling in their rawness that many are now wondering if anyone really knew Mother Teresa. Time Magazine has a great dissection of the revelations in the book and indicates how Teresa might now become a saint to both the faithful and those who don’t believe in God.

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one–the naked one–the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate…

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] 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…” [Link]

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p>Reading some of her confessions was deeply moving. It seems that the more success that Mother Teresa saw in her work in Calcutta, the darker and emptier her soul became, and the farther she drifted from the light of her God’s love. Far from being a “Saint of the Gutters,” she seems to use the perpetual darkness within her to drive her forward like some sort of “Queen of the Dammed.” Some theologians in the Time article use an analogy that describes her as a jilted lover who still carries a torch for a man (Christ) who she knows is never coming home to her.

How can you assume the lover’s ardor when he no longer grants you his voice, his touch, his very presence?… [Link]

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p>As you can imagine, these letters are a gold mine for theologians, atheists, psychologists, Nihilists, Existentialists, etc.

Psychologists have long recognized that people of a certain personality type are conflicted about their high achievement and find ways to punish themselves. Gottlieb notes that Teresa’s ambitions for her ministry were tremendous. Both he and Kolodiejchuk are fascinated by her statement, “I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before.” Remarks the priest: “That’s a kind of daring thing to say.” Yet her letters are full of inner conflict about her accomplishments. Rather than simply giving all credit to God, Gottlieb observes, she agonizes incessantly that “any taking credit for her accomplishments–if only internally–is sinful” and hence, perhaps, requires a price to be paid. A mild secular analog, he says, might be an executive who commits a horrific social gaffe at the instant of a crucial promotion. For Teresa, “an occasion for a modicum of joy initiated a significant quantity of misery,” and her subsequent successes led her to perpetuate it. [Link]

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p>That last bit I highlighted has similarities to Hinduism, especially in the Gita where Krishna continually warns Arjun that even ill thoughts may result in bad karma. The central themes found in Teresa’s writings remind me a lot of some poetry by another “saint.” Especially her references to the dark night within her soul.

A night full of talking that hurts
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.

-Jelaluddin Rumi

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It was when Mother Teresa finally accepted that the darkness would never leave her that she embraced it:

I can’t express in words–the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me–for the first time in … years–I have come to love the darkness–for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a ‘spiritual side of your work’ as you wrote–Today really I felt a deep joy–that Jesus can’t go anymore through the agony–but that He wants to go through it in me.

–TO NEUNER, CIRCA 1961… [Link]

Of all of the quotes included in the Time article, the following one touched me the most. Although she did not realize it, what she was actually saying mirrored the central idea found in the Bodhicharyavatara, written by 8th century Indian scholar Shantideva:

“If I ever become a Saint–I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven–to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth,” she wrote in 1962. [Link]

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p>Theologically, this is a bit odd since most orthodox Christianity defines heaven as God’s eternal presence and doesn’t really provide for regular no-shows at the heavenly feast. [Link]

Compare this to the idea of a Bodhisattva:

Another common conception of the bodhisattva is one who delays his own entering into Nirvana in order to save all sentient beings out of his enormous compassion. He is on a mission to liberate all sentient beings, and only then will he rest in his own enlightenment. [Link]

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It begs the question, was Teresa really a Mahayana Buddhist at heart? It shows you how human thought can ultimately converge on some universal themes.

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But really, we shouldn’t know any of this:

Please destroy any letters or anything I have written.

–TO PICACHY, APRIL 1959… [Link]