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August 29, 2007
Hello everyone,
In the most recent issue of Time appeared an article that chronicles Mother Teresa’s prolonged period of doubt and dryness. Though the story of Mother Teresa has been quite widely publicized, we will attempt a brief sketch of her life here. As early as twelve, Agnes Bojaxhiu knew that she was being called to the mission field, and as a young nun, she felt that calling confirmed when Christ spoke to her in most intimate terms, telling her: “I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children.” After pleading with her superiors, she was finally granted leave and achieved staggering success in her mission. Yet soon after she stepped foot in Calcutta, the conscious presence of God fled from her life and she was left alone and lonely, tormented by the absence of God’s presence in her life. Outwardly there were many signs that God was blessing and confirming his calling on her life, but inwardly she experienced none of the intimacy she had as a young nun and was tormented by questions of abandonment and spiritual failure. In what St. John of the Cross calls the “dark night,” St. Paul of the Cross (not to be confused with St. John) underwent an ordeal that lasted forty-five years; with a very brief period of reprieve, Mother Teresa’s lasted from shortly after she arrived in Calcutta to her death. A new book of her letters was recently published by Doubleday entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light and edited by Missionaries of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk; her request to have these letters to spiritual advisors destroyed was overruled by the Church.
Parts of the Catholic press in particular have reacted somewhat defensively to not only this article in Time, but several other articles and newscasts that have appeared about Mother Teresa as well. Got it Wrong, Again notes that “The secular media often lack nuance and context in reporting on matters that require some theological depth.” They go on to suggest, “With regard to Mother Teresa, there is widespread confusion between belief in God and the feeling that he is near.” There is no doubt about the latter point—even if we have been taught differently, we often believe that a lack of spiritual feeling in our lives is an indication of failure; what is more, it is true that the secular press does not always understand or respect the nuances of faith. Likewise, Mother’s Darkness begins by suggesting: “It should be no surprise that a Time magazine story is using the 10th anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa to suggest she doubted whether or not God existed.” Yet it seems to me that these articles and others like them are overreacting. Even if these secular sources do present views of Mother Teresa that are not in keeping with those of the Church, there is still an indication of a spiritual interest and a hunger on the part of the public. It is usually much more productive—even in the face of heavy-handed persecution—to be diplomatic and to avoid defensiveness, which is generally perceived in a negative light. Even when deserved, a defensive stance often has a negative overall effect, a bit like playing into the bully on the playground: the bully is only looking to get a reaction and will soon go elsewhere if the desired reward is withheld. Rather than reacting to misunderstandings with defensiveness, a more productive approach is that suggested by Mathew Henry in his classic commentary on the sixth chapter of John; speaking of Jesus, he writes: “It is the wisdom of teachers, when they are asked even impertinent unprofitable questions, thence to take occasion to answer in that which is profitable, that the question may be rejected, but not the request.” Likewise, issuing a response that does not adopt a persecuted stance serves as a gentle corrective without arousing unnecessary offense: “a gentle answer turneth away wrath.”
Whatever our final thoughts on the piece, the account in Time seeks to uncover a variety of reactions to Mother Teresa and certainly not all of those accounts are in keeping with the theological understanding of Christians in general, much less the finely nuanced teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Speaking of the new book of letters entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, Time correspondent David Van Biema reports:
Two very different Catholics predict that the book will be a landmark. The Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology department at the conservative Ave Maria University in Florida, thinks Come Be My Light will eventually rank with St. Augustine’s Confessions and Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain as an autobiography of spiritual ascent. [Rev. James] Martin [, “author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa’s doubt,” and editor] of [the Jesuit magazine] America, a much more liberal institution, calls the book “a new ministry for Mother Teresa, a written ministry of her interior life,” and says, “It may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor. It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone.”
Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk [editor of Come Be My Light] and Martin assume that Teresa’s inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn’t there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled her to do great work. But to the U.S.’s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book’s Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned. Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great [and dubbed one of the so-called “four horsemen of the counter-apocalypse” of leading atheists (along with Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris)]: “She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.” Meanwhile, some familiar with the smiling mother’s extraordinary drive may diagnose her condition less as a gift of God than as a subconscious attempt at the most radical kind of humility: she punished herself with a crippling failure to counterbalance her great successes. (Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith)
In contrast to these views, how would a Catholic theologian understand Mother Teresa’s sufferings? Interestingly, I just finished Father Weinandy’s book Does God Suffer?, which I began nearly two years ago. In the concluding two chapters of the book, he shows us a picture of suffering in Christ that strikes me as particularly perceptive, even though it has been one of the nuanced views of Catholic theology for a long time. As the Apostle Paul suggests—and in keeping with the idea of puzzle pieces mentioned in the last issue—the believers in Christ are one body and he is the head. Just as he suffered and ultimately was put to death, so too he told his followers that they would suffer. In the beatitudes Christ taught that those who suffered for his name’s sake were blessed. The author of 1 Peter writes: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you” (4:12–14). Again and again in the New Testament, we have a picture of suffering as effecting some form of salvation, a word we may define as involving, in some way, the mending of that which is broken and the restoring of that which has been fractured or taken away. That is, while suffering in itself is not a good, it can and does work as a form of redemption according to the mysterious dealings of God.
The idea, then, is that we are all one body, the saints already gone before—the great cloud of witnesses cheering—as well as those who are yet alive. Not only those who consciously adopt the name of Christ either, but all persons can, at least indirectly, be involved in the redemptive effects of suffering. Thus, the whole of creation groans for renewal, the entire body along with its Head bears one another’s burdens and those of the world. Christ’s suffering in turn becomes our suffering as co-laborers in Christ; complementarily, as we suffer so too does Christ, the Head, receive unto himself our sufferings.
The wages of sin is death, not to satisfy a price required by Lucifer or by God, but simply because death is the logical ramification of sin. The picture we have here is like a cosmic or universal truth, which we may describe as the law of reaping and sowing: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Galations 2:7–9). In fact, if I may be allowed a discursion for a moment, there is an interesting sidebar (to me) in this idea. Since classes have started up again this semester, I have frequently had difficulty dropping off to sleep, my mind a whirl and my body filled with nervous energy. One thing that sometimes helps—and I’ve only recently renewed this habit—is reading chapters of the bible. For some reason I felt impressed to read Isaiah 5, and I found that rather odd. The book of Isaiah has some of the most beautiful poetry in the entire Hebrew Bible, but it tends to occur later in the book. The first part of Isaiah, by contrast, tends to be gloom and doom: the prophesying of the fall of Israel to the Assyrians. Chapter five happens to be among the darker passages, not exactly the sort of thing one thinks to read to quiet the churning mind. Nevertheless, the compulsion to read this chapter was very strong so I kept an open mind and read with a receptive attitude.
In the beginning of this chapter, Israel is compared to a fine vineyard that has resulted in wild grapes; that is, the song is sung of someone who carefully tended his vines, buying the choicest stock and building the finest of presses along with expansive fortifications. The crop, however, “went to seed” as the expression goes and resulted in grapes unfit for eating or the making of wine. Thus, the keeper of the vines will “take away its hedge, give it to grazing, / break through its wall, let it be trampled!” (5:5). This song forms a parable against Israel, who have indulged themselves, drinking and feasting, taking advantage of others in their greed, and scorning the prophets, laughing at their warnings: you say God will move against us? Well “[l]et him make haste / and speed his work, that we may see it / On with the plan of the Holy One of Israel! / let it come to pass that we may know it!” (5:19). The picture we see, then, is a nation that cares only for its own self-indulgence and stops concerning itself with any kind of betterment. The people grow lazy and complacent and crime runs rampant in the streets. For this reason, God will bring justice upon their heads; in some of the most famous anthropomorphic poetry of the Hebrew Bible, he will “whistle” to “a far-off nation” (Assyria)—“Hey boys, yoo-hoo, over here”—and “speedily and promptly they will come” (5:26). They are a fierce nation: “[t]heir arrows are sharp / and all their bows are bent. / The hoofs of their horses seem like flint / and their chariot wheels like the hurricane. / Their roar is that of the lion ... / they growl and seize the prey, / they carry it off and none will rescue it” (5:28–29).
I was determined to put a fine face on what I’d read, attempting to see if I could discover any reason for my strong compulsion to read. And then it occurred to me in light of my recent readings and thoughts that what was expressed in these verses might very well be a universal law: “the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” That is, if we were to view the habits and lifestyle of the nation of Israel thus described, it would be a decadent picture: an opulent lifestyle grown careless and just waiting for somebody to come along and take it away: a nation sowing to its own flesh, its own carnal nature. I thought to myself that the wages of sin surely is misery and death and though God may well intercede in the affairs of humanity, there may very well be a cosmic law as predictable as cause and effect in which the direction we choose to chart our lives will either lead to our destruction (and that of others) or else to our own redemption (and that of others). It may not be at all the case that God “whistles for the Assyrians”; it may simply be that like the law of gravity, what we sow, we will surely reap unless God intervene.
It also occurred to me that the increase of sowing is exponential—plant ten kernels of corn and only one comes up and thrives. How many ears of corn result from the one seed in ten? How great is the increase? And if that increase is so great, then a change in crops could soon enough go a long way in undoing the damage done in sowing thistles or tares instead of wheat. Thus, to the one the law is a curse, to the other a blessing; the one, in the language of the Hebrew Bible, sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind, the other, if he grow not weary, in due time will reap a bountiful harvest. Or, in the language of the Apostle, “For if by the transgression of the one [man Adam] the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many” (Romans 5:15).
In any case, suffering and ultimately death are understood in Catholic theology—indeed, not just Catholic—as being the “wages of sin.” Yet, using the example of the Israelites being slaughtered and the remnant carried off by the Assyrian army, great misery can cause us to cry out to God. Certainly if there were those who had once arrogantly thumbed their noses at the prophets and said, “If this Yahweh mean what he says, then be on with it!” they had plenty of time to reconsider. That is one way that suffering can draw us unto God. But why do good people suffer? Why did Jesus suffer? It is here that a deeper Catholic mystery is unfolded; it is here that a deeper meaning is given to the suffering of men and women like Mother Teresa. In traditional Christian theology, there is a time in which Son is separated from Father; namely when he cries out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Mother Teresa had prayed to take on the suffering of her savior; she had asked to drink from his chalice of pain. As Time reports:
There are two responses to trauma: to hold onto it in all its vividness and remain its captive, or without necessarily “conquering” it, to gradually integrate it into the day-by-day. After more than a decade of open-wound agony, Teresa seems to have begun regaining her spiritual equilibrium with the help of a particularly perceptive adviser. The Rev. Joseph Neuner, whom she met in the late 1950s and confided in somewhat later, was already a well-known theologian, and when she turned to him with her “darkness,” he seems to have told her the three things she needed to hear: that there was no human remedy for it (that is, she should not feel responsible for affecting it); that feeling Jesus is not the only proof of his being there, and her very craving for God was a “sure sign” of his “hidden presence” in her life; and that the absence was in fact part of the “spiritual side” of her work for Jesus.
This counsel clearly granted Teresa a tremendous sense of release. For all that she had expected and even craved to share in Christ’s Passion, she had not anticipated that she might recapitulate the particular moment on the Cross when he asks, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The idea that rather than a nihilistic vacuum, his felt absence might be the ordeal she had prayed for, that her perseverance in its face might echo his faith unto death on the Cross, that it might indeed be a grace, enhancing the efficacy of her calling, made sense of her pain. Neuner would later write, “It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special share she had in Jesus’ passion.” And she thanked Neuner profusely: “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.”
Her craving for God does seem to be a “sure sign” of his “hidden presence”: we have one of at least two explanations for her continued tenacity in the face of such darkness. Either Hitchens is correct and “her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith [that] could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself” or else there was a real transformation that had taken place within her; an ontological transformation suggesting that her heart was signed and sealed by the spirit of the Dove, a deposit of the spiritual inheritance to come. Within myself, I know the answer, or I believe I do: just recently I underwent a much milder version of the dark night, an experience that happens relatively frequently in my world.
As it happens, a Christian brother dropped by at some point during the process and asked me what my motivation was in serving God. That question called for reflection. His own given reason for serving God was the satisfaction he felt for ministering to others. I knew that could not be my reason, for there have been plenty of times that I have been certain my words have provided another hope and light, yet I was left with a shadow draped across my world feeling none of the joy or comfort I was able to offer another. Nor could I reply that my motivation in serving God came from the hope of a life after death, though of course I do hope that some day we will be united with God and those we love. My motivation for serving God, it seems, could not have any answer that involved anything consciously derived from my quest, though of course I do experience a level of hope, comfort, and silent strength many times that no doubt is more responsible for keeping me going than I am aware. In any case, at that moment, an honest answer could not include any of those effects, though I suddenly remembered something I had read in Sheldon Vanauken’s book A Severe Mercy. In short, he and his wife were exceptionally close, and, among other things, acquired a sail boat and traveled the world together. While on one of their voyages—I do not recall which one now—she contracted a fatal disease and this happened around the time that Davy had given her life to Christ and Sheldon felt betrayed, as though he were competing with another lover. And of course in a very real sense, he was. The way the autobiography plays out, it seems that both Davy and God were a part of a “severe mercy”—Davy effectively gave her life for her husband’s spiritual transformation. His way home was barren and rocky; indeed, the act of mercy was of the severest sort and did not feel in the least like love. Vanauken writes:
God seemed remote. The world was still empty without Davy, and now God seemed to have withdrawn, too. My sense of desolation increased. God could not be as loving as He was supposed to be, or—the other alternative. One sleepless night, drawing on to morning, I was overwhelmed with a sense of cosmos empty of God as well as Davy. “All right,” I muttered to myself. “To hell with God. I’m not going to believe this damned rubbish any more. Lies, all lies. I’ve been had.” Up I sprang and rushed out to the country. This was the end of God. Ha!
And then I found I could not reject God. I could not. I cannot explain this. One discovers one cannot move a boulder by trying with all one’s strength to do it. I discovered—without any sudden influx of love or faith—that I could not reject Christianity. Why I don’t know. There it was. I could not. (A Severe Mercy 190)
As I was thinking of how best to reply to my friend, I suddenly seized on the memory of this passage. What was my motivation for serving God? Simply that I could not turn back. Something inside of me was permanently altered in a way that was unexplainable, in a way that a man like Hitchens may never comprehend. And that alteration felt a lot like the way truth operates, for upon the realization that something is true, one finds that no matter how much one rebels, short of brain injury, debilitating disease, or trauma to the skull, one cannot ever turn one’s back on what one has seen clearly. As I write in another place from years ago:
For this reason [that in our worst moments we recognize our true selves], I rejoice in my times of testing for they show me the truth, and nothing whatsoever will happen without first confronting the truth in all of its barenaked shamefulness. And we will soon find that this wretched beast will be our dearest ally. This creature shows us the paradoxes of life: the folly of pleasure, the wisdom of sorrow, giving away to get, surrendering control to gain it, forsaking the search for happiness so that we may find it, dying so that we may live; ah yes, this hideous creature shows us what true beauty is really all about.
Not so long ago I fell in love with the truth. It has not always been fun: certainly has not always been romantic by far. We have had our share of ups and downs, and I have cried out in agony more times than I care to count: cried out with the frustration of knowing I had no choice but to continue on. Never would I find a better partner, and what is more, I could not leave. She would never desert me even if I tried to desert her. She would haunt me until I came back to her: having once tasted of her embrace, I could never go back to the way things were before. Though at times I find myself standing alone and at times I find myself shouldering burdens I am compelled to carry (for no one else will), I cannot, nor will I, turn away from her for long. Instead, I have come to love that ugly face, finding it softening and growing more beautiful as I continue to pursue it.
Whenever I write, I try to keep her face the focus of my thoughts. At times, I lose sight of her and my writing flounders because of my fallibility. Yet when I fix her face in my sights, I find that rather than people seeing her as being a creature of scorn, misfit and grotesque, instead they seem to see a beauty there, the beauty I have grown to love. Some will brush away a tear, or feel her fire stir the cold emptiness inside into a flaming fire that ignites a spark in their hearts they long since thought had died. They can feel her warmth envelop them, and almost without realizing it, they stand a little straighter, hold their gaze a little higher, and move with a freshly stirred courage to her irresistible rhythm. (Composition Final: Candid Thoughts and Observations)
Further along in the course of our conversation, my friend reminded me of what the Eucharist ceremony symbolizes: that is, what the taking of the bread and the drinking of the wine during the Lord’s supper, or communion, symbolizes. The Messianic Jews are to be envied because of their conception of Yeshua—Jesus—and the rich symbolism they find in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that we often tend to miss. In particular, Jewish Wedding Customs and the Bride of Messiah does a marvelous job at tracing the rich symbolism of the “Wedding Supper of the Lamb” as the following excerpt attests:
What is Eyrusin?The word eyrusin means—Betrothal. The period is also called—kiddushim—meaning “sanctification” or “set apart.” This word really defines the purpose of the betrothal period—it is a time in which the couple are to set aside to prepare themselves to enter into the covenant of marriage. The Jewish understanding of betrothal has always been much stronger than our modern understanding of an engagement. The betrothal was so binding that the couple would need a religious divorce in order to annul the contract (Deut. 24:1–4). This option was only available to the husband, as the wife had no say in any divorce proceeding—this point will be very important when we view the spiritual implications later.
Aspects of the BetrothalAfter the couple had undergone—Mikveh hwqm (immersion), each separately, they would appear together under the Huppah—or canopy—and in public they would express their intention of becoming betrothed or engaged. From ancient times—the wedding canopy has been a symbol of a new household being planned—(Ps. 19:5; Joel 2:16). While under the Huppah the couple participated in a ceremony in which some items of value were exchanged—such as rings, and a cup of wine was shared to seal the betrothal vows. After the ceremony—the couple was considered to have entered into the betrothal agreement. This period was to last for one year. During this time the couple was considered married—yet did not have sexual relations—and continued to live separately until the end of the betrothal. We see this time of betrothal illustrated in the gospels as reflected in the lives of Yoseph and Miriam—(see Mat. 1:18–25).
The Matan—or Bridal GiftFollowing this betrothal ceremony the groom would return to his home to fulfill his obligations during the betrothal. But just prior to leaving he would give his wife to be a Matan ntm—or bridal gift, a pledge of his love for her. Its purpose was to be a reminder to his bride during their days of separation of his love for her, that he was thinking of her—and that he would return to receive her as his wife. (Jewish Wedding Customs and the Bride of Messiah)
Thus, my friend brought to mind that there is a reason why Mother Teresa’s longing for God is a “sure sign” of God’s “hidden presence”; there is a reason one does not just walk away even when all the physical manifestations of God’s presence depart: it is because in some way, one has been married to Christ; in some way, what was once separate has come together and been made one flesh as is theologically foreshadowed in the figure of the Son. Though the transformation effected in one’s life as one “sows to the Spirit” is an ontological one in nature, it takes place below the threshold of feeling or emotion. That is, the change that takes place is permanent and remains rooted even as the fickle emotions above ebb and swirl.
Often the spiritual life is inwardly marked by periods of heightened emotion, comfort, peace, joy and all the various fruits of the Spirit; it is not always. Emotion is never a certain indication that what has taken place has taken root. Yet the deeper longings of the heart point to the path chosen; it is this element buried deeper than emotion that bears witness. Hence the conception of the human being has as its outward and most superficial crust the intellectual shell. The “hidden springs” that drive this level of being are themselves emotional in nature. But deeper still, beneath the vicissitudes of pleasure and of pain lies the spiritual center of a person: it is here that God operates in secret, in the dark recesses of the surrendered heart. Thus it is that Mother Teresa continued to her dying day to smile and give thanks to the God she could not feel. The pit Hitchens claims she dug for herself turned out instead to be the hollowed-out bedchamber of love.
Let us turn once more to the Time article:
America’s Martin wants to talk precisely in religious terms. “Everything she’s experiencing,” he says, “is what average believers experience in their spiritual lives writ large. I have known scores of people who have felt abandoned by God and had doubts about God’s existence. And this book expresses that in such a stunning way but shows her full of complete trust at the same time.” He takes a breath. “Who would have thought that the person who was considered the most faithful woman in the world struggled like that with her faith?” he asks. “And who would have thought that the one thought to be the most ardent of believers could be a saint to the skeptics?” Martin has long used Teresa as an example to parishioners of self-emptying love. Now, he says, he will use her extraordinary faith in the face of overwhelming silence to illustrate how doubt is a natural part of everyone’s life, be it an average believer’s or a world-famous saint’s.
We spoke of puzzle pieces in the previous issue; in this one, we will employ another metaphor. The dark, desolate streets are showered in broken bits of bottle and fragments of glass. The shards speak of wasted lives and broken hearts. We see in them darkness, not light, pain, not joy. Yet there are those who specialize in broken glass; there are those whose livelihood it is to create sweeping and majestic mosaics of light. As Christopher Hitchens ambles down the street, he kicks at the pieces and sees in them no light or life. For him, the broken pieces point irrevocably to the broken world where the canopy above contains only the silent stars and the earth below the worms that feed on decaying flesh. Here, in this world, beast preys upon beast, and the mental neurons fire in increasing complexity to celebrate a life lived only once—and then the earth and sky. There are others, however, who see in the fragmented shards—interiorly dark and dreary, lives like those of Mother Teresa’s—quite a different hue. These persons see in such apparently opaque shards the variegated colors of the rainbow and a light of brightest white beyond to which they point. There are those who see only bits of broken glass and the darkness of city streets; there are others who see portraits of painted light, alive, animated with a life and love that is not their own. Two ways of seeing the same sight; two sowers: see what crops they have sown, the one to the flesh, the other to the city of light.
God bless,
Eric
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