Welcome to the Kitopedia. All entries are © 2001-2007 Christopher Sunami, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. These entries are NOT publicly licensed. No entries may be reproduced without permission and attribution.
NOTE: Most essays on this site represent original theoretical work. If you find these articles interesting, inspiring or helpful, please let me know. If you refer to them, please give me and this website credit. In addition, links back to this page in blogs or from other sites are always appreciated!


Search



Forums








Hero For Christ




Barack Obama

Mother Teresa's Dark Night of the Soul



by Christopher Sunami
9/17/07

A recent article in Time Magazine ("Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith") focused on private writings of Mother Teresa recently released by the church. Those writings detailed the internal struggles Mother Teresa felt as a result of ceasing to sense the presence of God in her life.

Whe she was a young woman, Mother Teresa felt in very close and personal contact with God, to the point that she experienced God as clearly directing her to leave her convent and minister directly to the poor of Kolkata (Calcutta). Almost immediately following her acceptance of that mission, however, her sense of God's nearness began to fade, leaving her with a sense of loneliness and loss that continued, with only one brief interruption, for the rest of her life.

The article notes that many religious figures and mystics have had similar experiences, to the point that the phenomena has a recognized name, the "Dark Night of the Soul". It also offers several contrasting opinions on that dark night's significance. These range from the claim of atheist journalist (and outspoken Mother Teresa critic) Christopher Hitchens that Mother Teresa simply realized she was living a lie, to the suggestion by her own spiritual advisor Reverend Joeseph Neuner that her sense of emptiness was itself a form of redemptive suffering.

To me, however, it seems that there is a third way to view the situation. The clue is found in the fact that Mother Teresa ceased experiencing God's presense at the very moment when she most fully embraced God's plan for her as she perceived it. We might say, therefore, that when she was a young nun, she experienced God, as it were, from the outside. Once she accepted God's work for her, however, she effectly became one of God's representatives on Earth, no longer able to sense God's presense in the world only because she had become a part of it.

Metaphorically speaking, it reminds me of a martial arts class I once took. Each session would begin with the teacher standing in front of the class next to a picture of the founders of the style. He would first stand with the class and we would all salute the picture, and then would turn and face the class, as the students saluted a second time. Symbolically, it showed that the teacher was playing two roles. For the first salute, he was the first amoung the students, paying collective respect to the great teachers of the past. For the second salute, however, he became the living representative of the school's lineage.

In the same way, we can see Mother Teresa as a young nun facing "towards" God, but as the mature founder of her own order, she instead turns and faces outwards towards the poor and the needy of the world. With her back symbolically turned towards God, she can no longer percieve God as she once did, yet others facing her can now perceive God's presense standing behind her and her work.
Comment on this Page or Read Guestbook