This was from 1959. As late as 1995, two years before her death she was still writing about her "spiritual dryness." According to the article in Time while she struggled with the meaning of this emptyness her entire life in Calcutta, over time she came to accept it as part of her calling: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?
If I ever become a Saint — I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven — to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth.That's a remarkable statement from a women renowned both for her work and for the faith that guided her life. But what we now know is that for 50 years she did courageous work among some of the poorest people on earth in spite of the fact that faith in God eluded her.
2 comments:
I can't help but think that many Catholic nuns also suffer depression like the rest of the general population--if not more so. After all, whether cloistered or uncloistered, their lives are lived in celebacy. They are asked to help people suffering and afflicted and are without any hope of relief and spend their lives trying to grant compassion to people who have no hope of betterment of their lives. These two things alone would cause depression even among the strongest of us.
Those who are "compassion oriented" tend toward this type of brain chemistry. Why should Mother Theresa have been immune?
I wonder what sign of God Mother Theresa was looking for all her life? She should have looked at herself. She was the sign of God! God was her and she was God!
We are all children of God, and in our own way, we can all lives our lives as if to become a saint. Call it the equality theory of Christianity if you will, because I don't believe that some people can be "better" than others.
We are all children of God and we all have the capacity to love in the way that Mother Theresa loved.
As I have read articles regarding Mother Theresa's "Dark Night of the Soul" I am convinced that she struggled with severe clinical depression which was not treated medically. As one who has faced the pain of clinical depression both in my family and in myself, I can attest to the fact that what one knows remains so distant from what one feels when dealing with biochemical depression.
My hope is that the positive that will come from this is the acceptance of clinical depression as a disease that often needs more than faith or the power of positive thinking to overcome. One of the truths that I have experienced is that having lived through periods of deep depression, I am all the more aware of and supportive of others who are dealling with hopelessness. Mother Theresa is no less a person of great faith - her own emptiness kept her in connection with others who know emptiness whether that be of mind, body or spirit. That connection let others know that no matter how desolate their lives, there was at least one woman who connected with their pain.
The tragedy is that she had to live so many years battling, I believe, a severe clinical depression, without the help of medicine to regulate her brain chemistry. Many people with that level of depression would have escaped the emptiness of this world through addictions or death. The fact that she did neither of these is a testament to her faith.
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