Abiding Spiritual Pain: The Way of Every Pilgrim

Mother Teresa of Calcutta was probably the most famous, most admired, most quoted, Christian personality of the 20th century.  Robert Fulghum expressed what most of us felt about her:  “No shah or president or king or general or scientist or pope; no banker or merchant or cartel or oil company or ayatollah holds the key to so much power as she has.  None is as rich.  For hers is the invincible weapon against the evils of this earth:  the caring heart.  And hers are the everlasting riches of this life:  the wealth of the compassionate spirit.”

After her death, Mother Teresa was canonized a saint by Pope Francis in 2003, but during her lifetime we were already referring to her as a “living saint”.  In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work with the poor and even today  she is considered one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. 

We held her in the highest esteem—the epitome of an authentic Christian—who dedicated her entire life to what Jesus called “the least of these.”  When she died in 1997 another side of her life began to unfold as her personal letters were opened to the public. Time magazine reported in 2007 that she spent nearly half a century without feeling God’s presence, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist.”  Many were surprised by these revelations of her faith struggle. Why? Almost all of us, if we are truly honest, have known and experienced, as all people of faith before us, what Saint John of the Cross  called “the dark night of the soul.”  But we just couldn’t believe this about Mother Teresa—that “small, stooped woman in a faded blue sari and worn sandals,” whom we had come to idolize. 

Because we idolized her, we missed seeing and embracing her heart struggles.  We lifted her up and missed the essence of what it means to be a pilgrim of The Way.  Part of that Way is to be stripped of our warm, fuzzy, feely, everything is hunky-dory spirituality.  Someone wrote that “Prayer can give us great experiences.  But what are you after?  Are you after God, or are you after how awesome it feels to be after God?”  Are you after God for what God can do for you? “The only criterion for whether your prayer life is successful,” writes Ruth Barrows, “is whether it makes you a more charitable and loving person, not whether it feels good or bad,” not whether you get what you want or have an exhilarating kick from it by “feeling” God’s presence.

Mother Teresa, as Time reported, spent a half-century without feeling God’s presence, but that does not mean she lacked faith.  She lived her life acting as though she had it—she persevered in ministering to “the least of these” even in the face of the “darkness” she felt.  Lest you’ve forgotten, Jesus, in his most powerful parable says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”