Mother Teresa's Doubts - by Pastor Brad
Earlier this month a small flap on the religious news beat caught my eye. The publication of Mother Teresa's journals (against her wishes) revealed a side of her known to only a few close spiritual advisors during her lifetime.
It turns out that Mother Teresa suffered debilitating doubts and dark periods of anguish about her faith. In the days following this revelation, I heard a National Public Radio interview in which the interviewer asked a Pontifical insider if he was worried that the news would shake the faith of the Catholic faithful. He reassured her that Catholics are pretty well familiar with the experience of dark stuggles as part of their faith, so there's no reason for alarm.
The urgency of the interviewer being met by this calm reassurance made me laugh. "What!? Mother Teresa struggling with doubt and darkness? Not the strong rock of faith we imagined her to be?" "Yeah, no big deal; we're used to it," seemed to be the reply.
There's a good article about her experience of darkness here: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/164985?eng=y Scroll down to "Mother Teresa, the 'night' accepted as gift."
Franciscan Father Raniero Cantalamessa, an historian of early Christianity and the official preacher of the pontifical household, sets Mother Teresa's experience in historical context by describing it as "a classic case of what the scholars of mysticism, after Saint John of the Cross, usually call the dark night of the soul." He offers other examples from the literature of Christian mysticism.
All of which says to me, "Hey folks, regardless of what you hear from the televangelists (those whom Will Campbell calls 'soul molesters'), the Christian faith is not a bowl of cherries." A truth the insiders know all to well.