The Faith of Mother Teresa
By Pamela R. Durso, Associate Director
Baptist History and Heritage Society
Mother Teresa has long been my hero. A missionary of love and hope to the entire world, Mother Teresa profoundly shaped my understanding of the Christian faith. She provided for me a model of what Christ calls each of us to be and do. Every day of her life, no matter where she was or what she was doing, she lived her faith.
But to be honest, I always found Mother Teresa’s faith to be a bit simplistic, and I have never been able to resonate with her complete and unquestioning assurance. I never understood how she managed to work among the poorest of the poor and to wash the bodies of lepers and AIDs patients without asking why, without questioning God’s role in all the suffering. But in recent days, I have discovered that she had her share of doubts.
On October 14, 2003, while listening to NPR on my car radio, I heard Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s interview with Father Brain Kolodiejchuk, the chief advocate of Mother Teresa’s cause for sainthood. Kolodiejchuck stated that letters written by Mother Teresa to her superiors reveal that she had serious doubts and experienced years of spiritual darkness.
The time of darkness began in 1948, the year that Mother Teresa began her new work in Calcutta, India. The darkness came after two years of intense and ecstatic spiritual experiences that began while she traveling by train to the Himalayan region of Darjeeling. On the train, she heard God calling her to devote herself to “the poorest of the poor” and to live among them. Teresa then petitioned the Catholic Church for permission to follow God’s calling and to set up a convent in Calcutta. During the two years in which she prepared to begin her new work, Teresa had numerous vivid and clear visions of Jesus. Jesus spoke to her and revealed himself to her in profound ways.
In 1948, the plans were completed for her work, and Teresa began her ministry in the streets of Calcutta. Shortly after she started this new work, the visions stopped. Jesus never again came to her nor spoke to her. The incredible union she had experienced with Jesus completely disappeared, and Teresa was bereft. She felt that God had abandoned her, and she wrote of her tremendous pain in letters to her superiors. Kolodiejchuk read one letter in which she wrote, “I call, I cling, I want and there is no one to answer. The darkness is so dark and I am alone.” In another letter, Teresa wrote of the “terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”
Mother Teresa’s letter revealed that this darkness, this feeling of rejection and abandonment, continued throughout her life. She never again had an ecstatic spiritual experience. She never again felt that close intimate union with Christ that she had experienced in 1946.
What I find truly amazing about these new revelations about Mother Teresa is that this woman who knew spiritual emptiness and who knew loneliness and darkness continued to give herself so completely to those around her. She never stopped loving people. She never stopped seeking to meet needs. She never stopped doing the work of the kingdom. She lived every day in faithful obedience to God.
When I heard this story on NPR, I was floored. In all the things I have read over the years about and by Mother Teresa, I found no clue that she had experienced great despair. I never knew that she felt distanced from God. Yet knowing that she had her doubts and her times of great questioning have made me love and admire her even more than before. Knowing how she lived out her faith and now knowing of her spiritual struggle, I know that this small Catholic nun will forever be my greatest hero.
