Mother Teresa’s doubts make me like her more. Her doubts make her more human.Many people think that saints are perfect people. They are not.
From the very beginning of Christianity we had Peter denying Christ and Thomas doubting his resurrection.
The church is to be congratulated for its openness in publishing Mother Teresa’s letters. It has not always been so transparent. Before the autobiography of her namesake, St. Therese of Lisieux, was published, it was sanitized for publication, removing descriptions of her desolation and her desire to be a priest.
Spiritual writers tell us that the spiritual life develops in stages: the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive state or way.
In the first stage of spiritual development the emphasis is on turning away from sin, which involves repentance and conversion.
In the second stage, the emphasis is on the practice of virtue, which is an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Christ.
In the third stage, a person focuses less on his or her self and more on God who is ultimate love, beauty and goodness.
That third stage can be a roller coaster of being overwhelmed by the experiencing of God’s love and then experiencing God’s absence, which John of the Cross described as the dark night of the soul. Sometimes the ups and downs of the spiritual journey, as described by mystics, sounds like a romance novel. For some saints the valleys have been wider than the mountains were high.
For Mother Teresa, the high points appear to have been almost absent. But what is courage without fear, what is perseverance without trials, what is forgiveness without hurt, what is faith without doubts? God’s grace does not make it easy; God’s grace makes is possible. If it were easy, we would admire it less.
Many people put Mother Teresa up on a pedestal even during her life. The problem with putting people like Mother Teresa on a pedestal is that it lets us off the hook—“She is a saint, that is why she can do such things. I am not a saint; I will admire her but not imitate her.”
Imitating the saints does not necessarily mean doing exactly what they did. To one priest who wanted to join her order she said, “Go take care of the rich. Teach them to be concerned about the poor. I will take care of the poor.” Some are called to hands on work with the dying like Mother Teresa. Others are called to clean up water supplies so that people do not get sick. Others work in education so that people can get out of their poverty. But Mother taught us to treat every poor person not as a statistic or client, but as a person, as Christ.
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