Understanding Mother Teresa
Perhaps you’ve heard the controversty about Mother Teresa’s letters that express her doubts. (See Time http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415-6,00.html)
Mother Teresa’ doubt were profound, and plagued her. They were not the doubts of a day or a month, but a decades long sense of God’s absence.
Doubt dances with faith. The journey toward God is not a straight line - we zig and zag. For some, the zig are short, but frequent. For others, like Mother Teresa, the zag is long - a lifetime.
One thing I do understand: It is not unusual for those who commit to ministry to struggle with doubt and depression. The people who wrote the Psalms cried out to God and asked where He was. Jeremiah wondered why God gave him such a hard message. Moses, Jesus, and Paul all spent time in the desert.
We can’t answer completely why Mother Teresa felt God’s absence. We can still admire her faithfulness in living her calling. We learn to never get so lost in our calling that we lose our love.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:19 am
I’m glad you wrote this. I’ve been seeing this discussion come up on apologetics bulletin board I post on.