Albert Mohler, responding to the stories about Mother Theresa's "dark night of the soul":
Our confidence is in Christ, not in ourselves. We are weak; He is strong. We fluctuate; He is constant. We cannot trust our feelings nor our emotional state. We trust in Christ. Those who come to Christ by faith are not kept unto him by our faith, but by his faithfulness. [the rest]R. Albert Mohler Jr.: OnFaith on washingtonpost.com
I left a comment earlier, but somehow it didn't get posted. In that comment I said that, as I read the Time article, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I'm not sure how I feel about her request to have her letters be destroyed. On one hand, I think it was her self-effacing nature that prompted her to make the request. On the other hand, knowing what she went through encourages me when I go through my dark nights. It was the church that overruled her wishes. She made the request in 1959, and she may have even forgotten she said it.
ReplyDeleteThrough much of the reading I've done, I've come view the existence of a dark night as a confirmation of a person's dedication to God. It's easy to follow him if the feelings are good and one feels close to him. But it's much harder to follow when the feelings aren't there. Mother Teresa's experience just confirms for me that she was the saint that most of the world believes her to have been.
The Time article says, "If the letters became public, she explained to Picachy, 'people will think more of me — less of Jesus.' " For me, rather than focusing on her and what she did, this revelation focuses me even more on Jesus.
There are two books that helped me understand the dark night of the soul (in addition to St. John of the Cross's book by that name): When the Well Runs Dry and Drinking from a Dry Well, both by Thomas H. Green and published by Ave Maria Press. The viewpoint is Catholic, but much of the content speaks to all Christians.
Today, I watched the movie of Mother Teresa's life (starring Olivia Hussey). I had seen it before, but seeing it again made me realize that her dark night was not the big secret the Time article made it out to be. Twice in the film, she expressed how she felt distant from God. I feel like the media, once again, has distorted the truth.