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I have not read Mother Teresa's letters and so I am afraid that my response will be off-topic. However, I did want to respond to your statement:

She struggled with a different question: does God exist right here with me at this time? It is an experience of darkness. It can be unimaginably frightening; it can lead to despair.

The question reminds me of one the disciples asked in Mark 4:

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"

Though the disciples knew Jesus was there, whether He was with them, whether He cared about them, they were not sure. If the disciples of Jesus had those kind of doubts, I think it should not shatter anyone's faith if Mother Teresa had those kinds of doubts as well.

In verse 40, He says, "Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?"

Those times of darkness and despair, then, seem to be opportunities for faith and its endurance.

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Rev. William Byron, regarding Mother Teresa's expression of doubt stated--
"Doubt is an ongoing dimension of religious faith. Grace, another word for God's love, is stronger than the deepest doubt."

I doubt there is proof that this is as he has stated above. The statement about the strength of God's love, does not really address the questions raised by Mother Teresa.

Rev. William Byron, regarding Mother Teresa's expression of doubt stated--
"Doubt is an ongoing dimension of religious faith. Grace, another word for God's love, is stronger than the deepest doubt."

I doubt there is proof that this is as he has stated above. The statement about the strength of God's love, does not really address the questions raised by Mother Teresa.

Zeus With Us?

Doubt does not disqualify one from the community of believers; it simply serves to certify a person's membership in the human race. All humans, including all believers, have doubts.

Zeusians do well from time to time to recall the man who said to Zeus, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." This might be called the most Zeusian of all prayers. The son of Zeus had just assured this man that his son, who was ill, would be alright if he, the father, just had faith. I have faith, I do believe, he replied, but I'm carrying with my faith a good measure of unbelief. I need help. As do we all.

William Byron's experience was not what you would call classic atheism. He didn't deny the existence of Zeus. It seems to me that his question, shared by many of us at different times, was not: does Zeus exist? He struggled with a different question: does Zeus exist right here with me at this time? It is an experience of darkness. It can be unimaginably frightening; it can lead to despair.

Doubt is an ongoing dimension of religious faith. Grace, another word for God's love, is stronger than the deepest doubt.

Reverend

On Mother Teresa, you observed:

"Does God exist right here with me at this time? It is an experience of darkness. It can be unimaginably frightening; it can lead to despair."

Doubting God as a experience of darkness? Not the road to enlightenment of either pure disbelief for some, and new faith in God for others?

It would seem that Mother Teresa never fully resolved that private dialogue within her and/or with God. It is admirable, but surely discomforting for her as she continue for years and years to be in doubt.

Could it be that Mother Teresa's despair has to do not only with her thinking that God may have abandon her, but also with her own religious establishment that seems to have forsaken her in the years before the western media "discovered" her in the slums of Calcutta?

What is perhaps unimaginably frightening and can lead to despair in doubts on God for some seem to embolden others in their no doubt that God is on their side and they are doing God's work on earth. They derive strength in belief that God is with them and on their side.

At best, it makes them get out of their funk and get going to make everything better. At worse they go bombing people, abortion clinics, buildings, start wars etc from the United States to the Middle East and beyond because they think this is what God wants or say to them. That is a truly frightening and despairing darkness among some believers that we should be concerned with, not Mother Teresa's very human doubts on her private (not anymore) and personal belief and doubts.

Mother Teresa's constant and questioning doubts on God may not make her a full-tilt atheist, but it certainly at least qualify her as a humanist in many ways - from thinking and challenging her own beliefs honestly and brutally, and for her work in the slums of Calcutta.

Thank you and regards
J

"Mother Teresa would have been all over us for allowing that situation to develop in this wealthy country."

Of course, she also would have been vocal that access to contraceptive devices was equivalent to abortion and therefore equivalent to murder -- and she would have been aghast that Mississippi allows married men and women to divorce [remember her travels to Ireland in attempt to get divorce forbidden there].

Are we really willing to accept all sides of her belief?

"She struggled with a different question: does God exist right here with me at this time? It is an experience of darkness. It can be unimaginably frightening; it can lead to despair."
==
Mother Teresa's heroism is that, once she set her feet on the road Jesus invited her to take (in a very personal moment she obviously experienced), she never wavered.
I wonder what she thought in her later years, when she saw how her order had grown, how her sisters had progressed? She certainly gave the glory to God, not to her own efforts or example, but it must have been a great temptation to her to take the credit to her own efforts.
To continue, through the years, to set the example for her sisters when, internally, she completely lost the sense of the presence of God which had propelled her to take up the mantle in the first place demonstrates the strength of her will.
She lived a thoroughly amazing life.
I look forward to reading her new book. Something tells me we will get to know her as a person, as a friend, through these letters.
God knows, we need a touch of her generousity in our world today. On the anniversary of the Katrina storm, CNN's Anderson Cooper returned to New Orleans. I was shocked to discover that there is an army of working-class people with jobs living out on the street across from City Hall because they don't make enough to pay the inflated rents being charged in the city, due to the shortage of housing. I can't imagine being out there in the rain, the mosquitoes. It was a sad commentary. There has been a lot of suffering in our beloved Mississippi city. Mother Teresa would have been all over us for allowing that situation to develop in this wealthy country.

A very good point: the distinction between the types of doubt and, also, that faith can lead us through this darkness and allow us to continue to strive to know/be in the presence of God.