Quote:
Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone … Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated
And who is the author of this undated address to Jesus? Mother Teresa. This is not a ploy on the part of atheists to undermine her work, but is a selection from a new collection of her letters gathered as part of the campaign to have her canonized. For fifty years Teresa poignantly felt God’s absence. Teresa’s closest spiritual advisers in the Catholic Church see the mixture of Teresa’s earnest doubt and tireless service as an indication of her sainthood. Some might say that this proves hypocrisy is more alive and well than any of us knew, but Teresa presented herself and her life as an airtight admission of the presence and power of God even when she did not personally sense him in either prayer or the eucharist. The full range of implications from this are hard to spell out; but, if nothing else, this certainly is another mark against our individualistic sense of spirituality in the West. Besides, when I read this quote it was the first time I felt like I could ever relate to some aspect of Mother Teresa’s life . That’s scary–because if you can relate to someone like that, then you can be called to do what they did. Up until now I had unknowingly and unintentionally assumed I was safely insulated from the radiating call that Mother Teresa’s life is to all Christians, both Catholic and not. How ironically and quickly our own self-deception turns on us…
To read more on this, check out The Time Magazine article and Lilian Calles Barger’s site, where I first saw the story.
