"Living saint" brought light into world despite doubts.
Lewis ends with:
"One of the astounding things about Teresa's dark night of the soul is how long it lasted. Yet just as remarkable was her steadfast service and work for the poor and the weak, despite whatever doubts she may have harbored."
That "astounding thing" might seem inconsistent with the fact that she remained in steadfast service, but is it? I don't think so.
She had doubts because she was human, but even through the deepest doubts she had the faith necessary to be the face of Christ to so many. Her doubts did not exist because God does not exist, her doubts existed because she was human and I believe she recognized her human imperfections and rose above them to exibit a deep and abiding faith, even in the face of deep and abiding doubt.
Matthew 17:20 New International Version (NIV)
20He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
I bought a bracelet at a shop down in Galloway Village a few years ago. On that bracelet was inscribed a quote from Mother Teresa:
We Can Do No Great Things...Only Small Things With Great Love - Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was very human and knew just how human she was. She had a humble spirit and recognized that she couldn't do anything great, all she had to offer was a life of small acts motivated by the great love that Christ displayed for mankind.
It is not a "faith shaker" to me that Mother Teresa doubted. She was human. It is an inspiration that even in times of doubt and deep darkness her faith, even if as small as a mustard seed, sustained her service to Christ. That is what faith is all about.
7 comments:
There is an excellant critique of Mother T's racket called "The Missionary Position" by Christopher HItchens (the famed neo-con atheist).
Mother T's "racket?"
And what, pray tell, was Mother T's "racket?"
(I'm not even sure if I should bother to ask)
fighting words
Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 20, 2003, at 4:04 PM ET
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I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the "beatification" of the woman who styled herself "Mother" Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.
It's the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for "beatification," the first step to "sainthood," until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or "devil's advocate," to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century.
As for the "miracle" that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)
According to an uncontradicted report in the Italian paper L'Eco di Bergamo, the Vatican's secretary of state sent a letter to senior cardinals in June, asking on behalf of the pope whether they favored making MT a saint right away. The pope's clear intention has been to speed the process up in order to perform the ceremony in his own lifetime. The response was in the negative, according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who has acted as postulator or advocate for the "canonization." But the damage, to such integrity as the process possesses, has already been done.
During the deliberations over the Second Vatican Council, under the stewardship of Pope John XXIII, MT was to the fore in opposing all suggestions of reform. What was needed, she maintained, was more work and more faith, not doctrinal revision. Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion, but they are not required to affirm that abortion is "the greatest destroyer of peace," as MT fantastically asserted to a dumbfounded audience when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize*. Believers are likewise enjoined to abhor and eschew divorce, but they are not required to insist that a ban on divorce and remarriage be a part of the state constitution, as MT demanded in a referendum in Ireland (which her side narrowly lost) in 1996. Later in that same year, she told Ladies Home Journal that she was pleased by the divorce of her friend Princess Diana, because the marriage had so obviously been an unhappy one …
This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for "the poorest of the poor." People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the "Missionaries of Charity," but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell's admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda.
One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.
Correction, Oct. 21, 2003: This piece originally claimed that in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Mother Teresa called abortion and contraception the greatest threats to world peace. In that speech Mother Teresa did call abortion "the greatest destroyer of peace." But she did not much discuss contraception, except to praise "natural" family planning.(Return to corrected sentence.)
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and author of the book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2090083
Thank you for sharing the Hitchens article, Anon.
I skimmed it.
You see, we'll have to leave it to someone who is a Catholic and knows more about Mother Teresa to rebut Mr. Hitchens article.
I don't have the time, nor the inclination to devote my brain space and energy to rebutting Hitchens, though I really suspect that one who does have the time could do so.
I have to wonder why Hitchens has taken such an interest in smearing and dishonoring Christian figures, however.
What is it that causes some people to devote so much of their time to tearing down Christians?
Is it because they perceive that Christians are tearing them down because Christians do not condone arguably immoral lifestyles?
To think that someone feels so defensive of justifying sin that he must devote so much time and effort in undermining others in an effort to discredit them.........
BTW, Hitchenson is a neo-con and a supportor of Bush's war
"BTW, Hitchenson is a neo-con and a supportor of Bush's war"
Really!? How exciting for him! That means he is a highly credible source!!!
(SARCASM)
BTW, It's Hitchens. Not Hitchenson.
I only mentioned it because I find it fascinating the different groups one finds in bed with the pro-war folk and not that it makes his anti-Mother T arguement more valid (it doesn't).
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