The Agony of Mother Teresa
by Greg Mackie
Source of material commented on: http://tinyurl.com/23kudz
This week, the world was shocked by revelations about the inner life of Mother Teresa. Recently published letters to her confessors and superiors reveal that for the last fifty years of her life, while she was selflessly giving the Love of God to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, inwardly she was not feeling His Love at all. While she was beaming that beatific smile in public, in private she was telling her confidants that the smile was "a mask," "a cloak that covers everything." While her outer life was apparently full of light and love, she described her inner life as "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness," and "torture," so hellish that she even expressed doubts about the existence of God. What are we to make of this? Of course, no one can know exactly what is in another's soul. That being said, I believe A Course in Miracles can shed some helpful light on this.
The letters are published in a book entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, edited by the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk. They tell a story of ecstatic communion with Jesus at the beginning of Teresa's mission followed by years of apparent abandonment by him. Her calling to her life's work came in 1946 when she heard Jesus say to her, "Come, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come be My light." Teresa had visions of Jesus, and later wrote, "Jesus gave Himself to me." Yet once her mission actually began, this ecstatic communion dried up, never to return (except briefly for five weeks in 1959). The excerpts from her letters are simply heartbreaking. A few examples:
[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear—the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak.
I spoke [to others] as if my very heart was in love with God—tender, personal love. If you were [there], you would have said, "What hypocrisy."
What do I labour for? If there be no God—there can be no soul—if there is no Soul then Jesus—You also are not true.
[Addressed to Jesus]: 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?
What is going on here? A number of theories have been offered. Not surprisingly, atheist Christopher Hitchens (who wrote a scathing book about Mother Teresa years ago) claims that this was simply a matter of Teresa waking up to the recognition that there is no God, but being unwilling to accept that fact because it would render her whole life meaningless. Psychologist Dr. Richard Gottlieb suggests that perhaps Teresa unconsciously pushed God away from her as penance for the sin of pride that arose from her great outer success.
Then there are various spiritual explanations, including one presented to her by the Rev. Joseph Neuner, one of her many confessors. Teresa had long yearned to imitate Christ through imitating his passion: "I want to...drink ONLY from His chalice of pain" [her emphasis]. "I am willing to suffer...for all eternity, if this [is] possible." Neuner suggested to her that her very experience of Jesus' absence was his answer to her prayer to share his passion, an experience that echoed his own cry from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus' absence was thus actually part of the "spiritual side" of her work with him, and the very intensity of her love for God, even if apparently unrequited, was a "sure sign" of His "hidden presence." These words comforted Teresa greatly, enabling her to integrate the darkness into her life. She wrote to Neuner: "I can't express in words—the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me—for the first time in...years—I have come to love the darkness."
What would A Course in Miracles say about all this? It touches on so many Course themes, especially our perverse attraction to guilt and pain. But here, I want to focus on one Course theme that really jumped out at me as I read this account. According to the Course, two contradictory drives exist side by side in all of us. One is "your intense burning love for God and His for you" (T-13.III.2:8), the pull of which "is so strong that you cannot resist it" (T-13.II.1:2). The other is the ego's relentless drive for autonomy, a drive so strong that we would rather die than give it up (see T-13.III.5:3). These drives are mutually exclusive; giving in to our burning love for God means letting go of the ego forever. Therefore, as long as we remain identified with the ego, we will unconsciously do everything we can to deny and push away the God Whom we love. The Course tells us that this denial is actually indirect evidence of our love for Him: "You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him" (T-10.V.6:3). This constant tug of war between our love for God and our denial of that love leads to an experience common to spiritual seekers everywhere: Though we profess great love for God, we rarely actually experience Him to any significant degree. We want Him to come to us, even plead for Him to do so, yet it seems that He is nowhere to be found.
This sounds a great deal like what Mother Teresa experienced. She professed a burning love for God and Jesus that seemed to border on obsession; she once said, "I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before." If the Course is right, then the core of her love was genuine, a love that all of us feel for God deep down. But she had an ego like the rest of us, so alongside her love of God must have been that drive for autonomy that animates the ego. Therefore, though outwardly she was saying of Jesus, "The more I want him—the less I am wanted," underneath that was something different: The more she wanted him, the more her ego wanted to push him away. The Course's teaching on this makes me wonder if the very intensity of her conscious love for God actually increased the intensity of her unconscious denial of God. At any rate, it may have been this dynamic that led to the agony she described.
The point of all this is certainly not to pass judgment on Mother Teresa, whom I admire greatly and consider one of the great lights of the world. I share Kolodiejchuk's amazement that she was able to extend the love of Christ so fully even though she wasn't experiencing that love for herself. Apparently, Helen Schucman struggled with a similar problem; Jesus once said to her, "You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching" (T-16.III.1:2, Urtext version). We all wrestle with some version of this, do we not? We all face situations where we are called to love and serve and teach, even when we ourselves feel dry and empty inside. The fact that Mother Teresa (and Helen) could do this so well gives hope to us all.
Yet the good news of the Course is that we don't have to suffer God's absence. God is always available to us, a fact for which the Course has us offer prayers of gratitude: "And let me not forget my hourly thanksgiving that You have remained with me, and always will be there to hear my call to You and answer me" (W-pII.232.1:3). Our elder brother Jesus assures us, "I am not absent to anyone in any situation" (T-7.III.1:8). Why not let Them all the way in? Jesus once gave a promise to Helen that I imagine he must have given to Mother Teresa as well, even if she never heard it: "Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours" (T-16.III.7:3). May we all learn to extend the Love of God as Mother Teresa did, and may we all learn to experience the joy of that Love for ourselves.
Reader Feedback
I was so happy to find this information. I have been reading the book on Mother Theresa and so sad that she didn't know the Jesus of the Course in Miracle. Through reading her book, I continued to spiral into the sadness of the world: my own and everyone else's. Every phone call, every newspaper article lead me deeper and deeper until I started seeking again. And, of course, once seeking, I found myself again in the arms of my brother, Jesus. I had no idea that in reading about her sadness, I would come back to a deeper study of the beloved ACIM. Everything is truly perfect for in seeing her sadness, Mother Theresa lead me back to the perfect happiness of GOD.
Gwen
Dear Greg,
Although I do not consider myself a student of ACIM, I have some comments on the article about Mother Tersesa.
This possible explanation of the darkness Mother Teresa felt is based on things I learned from a flat, emotionless voice I heard for forty years and my experiences and observations after it slowly faded and vanished in 1990. Due to this, before stating my point I will outline what I based it on.
When I was 5 or 6 Dad helped me understand that since God created all things He is in all things. When I realized God was in me so I was part of God, I experienced becoming part of a bright white light. In the light was a vast silence filled with thousands of voices and I could understand all of them simultaneously. I knew this was God, we were all united within Him, and understood that our world is just a dream.
Three or four years later, while I was in third grade, I was given the ability to hear an flat, emotionless, voice that said It was just part of myself very close to God and everyone had a voice exactly like it, which was where hunches in intuition came from. I had just been given the ability to hear my inner voice more clearly than most people. Due to this explanation I knew I was not special in any way.
This inner voice told me over and over that God is spirit and spirit is Life. Because of this all that has Life, (spirit), is part of God, and all that is Life is exactly the same. This means there is no difference between the life of a plant, a bug, and a human. All are equally indestructible and forever exactly like That Which They Are Part Of. Humans assign different values to the various bodies Life uses while on earth, sometimes killing those deemed threatening or useless, but the life that used what seems to die remains forever, exactly like its' Creator.
My Voice told me that, "God is," is only thing we can really say about God. There are three reasons for this. First, time is actually over in eternity, so time does not really exist, which means everything that appears to be inside time, including language, is unreal. One cannot describe what is Real with something that is unreal.
Second, even if we use unreal language correctly and accurately say something about God that is correct, God is always more than what we can describe, so an accurate statement is "A lie by omission." Last, language is made up of meaningless symbols or sounds standing for unreal things, or human, incomplete, or inaccurate ideas about real things. Despite this, since my voice vanished I have learned that God is truly Love and Peace and Joy; three things that have been missing from my life for 17 years. Certainly these symbols for what I miss do not explain what I miss, however, the words "God is Love" lead to my point.
Because God is Love, and we are all part of God, we are love, just as we are spirit because God is spirit. Moreover, simple logic tells us that since all spirit is the same, all love is the same, and since we cannot be something without having it, we have the love we are, and that love is all exactly the same. This means none of us have the ability to love anything or anyone more or less than anyone else. To believe we can love anything or anyone more than anyone else, or in a very special way, is an illusion.
When I became pregnant with my first child I vowed to love my baby more that anyone else, more than myself and more than my husband. I would give up everything for this new life to be, no matter how hard it was or how much it hurt. Through a series of questions my voice made me realize that my child to be would be part of God and I could not love my child at all if I failed to love everyone else, including myself, in exactly the same way, because my child and everyone else are One. It would be like cutting the finger off of my baby and loving only that finger. The Lesson? We cannot love one person more or less than we love others and ourselves. When we try we end up loving nothing.
Mother Teresa vowed to love Jesus, "...as He has never been loved before." I am not certain what she meant by this however it sounds like the vow I made to love my baby; a vow that, if kept, would have given both my first born and myself nothing except the illusion of love; nothing but emptiness. Based on this I would suggest that while Mother Teresa was, and still is, Love, what she gave to Jesus and the world was the illusion of love, and, because we cannot give anything to anyone without receiving it ourselves, what she received was the illusion of love: nothing, emptiness, blackness.
When I read your article the other thing I noticed was that Mother Teresa had constructed an image of Jesus, one that was in horrible pain. It was this image she vowed to serve, love, and imitate. I am fairly certain the Jesus she served was an image, because I had an image of Jesus for many years. Although I was unaware of this image for 40 years, once I became aware of it I slowly realized that all images are based on fear, pain, and suffering. Ultimately all these images must lead to physical death, which I have, correctly or incorrectly, come to think of as our collective reenactment of the separation.
In a nutshell, if Mother Teresa was giving the illusion of love to an image of Jesus, the result would be emptiness, blackness, and loneness. I know how this blackness feels, and it hurts my heart to think anyone could have told her anything that would help her come to love it. Still, I can understand why she might have clung to this strange hope that loving blackness could give her peace. For several years I have been holding tight to the pain of losing my inner voice because this pain "proves" it was once there. Perhaps Mother Teresa felt this same urge to prove something real by embracing its' absence. If so, I can understand.
My Voice use to say, "Nothing can be proven to be True. Fact cannot be proven True because it is so far below Truth, and Truth cannot be proven True because it is so far above fact."
Reading your article has made me aware that I must find a way to stop attempting to prove that unity, love, joy, and gratitude exist by refusing to see them, refusing to accept facts that are unreal, yet gain power when we feel threatened by them, and refusing to make myself happy. I do not know if this awareness will alter anything in my life, yet, in some strange way, I can feel that it has altered me.
Thanks for the article.
Love, Edith
P. S. I read the article yours was based on and have questions. Probably they cannot be answered, yet you might speculate on them.
Was the Jesus that called Mother Teresa to work with the poor the same Jesus who is said to have authored the Course? The Jesus that called Mother Teresa called her, "weak and sinful." Would the Jesus of the Course call anyone "sinful" when the Course says sin does not exist?
Would the Jesus who authored the Course, and told us not to attempt to change the world, direct one person to go into the world and alter it?
Last, but not least, did Mother Teresa really do what she was first called to do? Did she really bring "light" to the poor and suffering when she carried darkness? Certainly she assisted thousands, supplying their bodies with the things needed to survive, and probably she helped many people firmly believe in a merciful God, yet if she saw only the illusions of misery, and did not see the light of God's true creation within each person she assisted, so she could rejoice in that light and thank God for that light, did she actually complete her mission, or did she simply help strengthen the illusion that God exists in the blackness, loneness, and emptiness of ego?
May God bless all your endeavors and may the Peace of God always be within
your awareness.
Edith Pounds Bernard.
Greg, I just finished the Times article on Mother Theresa and coincidentally decided to open your website and found you commentary. Well said.
Thanks for bringing it back to the simplicity of the Course's teachings.
Sincerely,
—Leslie Arden
I wanted to truly thank you for your further insight on Mother Theresa's agony. I had this sitting in my mind and I wanted to blog about it carefully. I read the story of her letters in Time and was at first perplexed that a woman on her last life(understood from Your immortal Reality) was going through so much pain. I was expecting so much light from her and was shocked as I read her personal accounts, but then I began to understand.
What was enlightening to me was how I came into your understanding, that some of us, who are searching, are induced with so much doubt;so much abandonment that we are in some cases tormented by it, but we still do, we still follow this invisible way. That dichotomy is putting us up against the reason we we created this world in the begining.It is right there, waiting for us disable it's power.
thank you so much again
wonderful.
—Martin Rollins
Chicago
Holistic Health Counselor
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