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Mother
Theresa's Spiritual Emptiness
May 19,
2007. It was a
surprise to learn from Rachel Davies in the Spring issue of Spectrum,
which has not yet been posted on the web, that Mother Theresa, suffered
from "spiritual darkness" most of her adult life.
This
"terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God,
of God not really existing" plagued her until she died.
Why? Did
she suffer from depression that might have responded well to medications?
Did she miss the quiet joys of the convent she left to serve the most
needy in Calcutta? Did she find it almost impossible to believe that
God loves the world as day after day she struggled against life's massive
and unrelenting cruelty? I don't know.
I do know that
most Christians some of the time and some Christians all of the time
experience spiritual discouragement. The reasons for this are legion
and most of them do not signal faltering faith.
Doubt is often
the brother of faith, sorrow often the sister of joy. Even Jesus
cried, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"
When it comes
to seeing our world as the bitter/sweet mix it is, true Christians stand
in line behind no one. But like many others they wager that the
positive is more basic and real than the negative, the light more profound
and promising than the darkness.
The wisest
scholars often feel the most ignorant, the finest musicians the most deaf,
the greatest saints the most sinful.
Those
who do great things often see very clearly how much more there is to
accomplish. This sometimes overwhelms them.
It would not
surprise me if this happened to Mother Theresa.
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