David Van Biema published a story this week in Time magazine describing
the doubts of Mother Teresa and her long struggle with "spiritual darkness"--her personal experience of a "dark night of the soul."
The story points to a collection of her letters published in the new book,
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday 2007), edited and compiled by Brian Kolodiejchuk.
The letters draw readers into the long (66 years) and terrible struggle the founder of the Daughters of Charity experienced in her personal faith and spirituality.
As she performed her amazing and often heroic work that gained her international acclaim, she struggled with deep and profound loneliness, doubt, darkness and silence. She confesses that her trademark smile was simply her "mask" or "a cloak that covers everything."
Not surprisingly, at least to me, the darkness settled into her life shortly after she began her life's mission among the poorest of the poor. Her story will be surprising to many and a relief to many others. Sadly, in my view, far too many will have no clue what she is describing in her letters and journals.
In the end, with the help of one of her confessors, she was able to reframe the silence of God and of her beloved Jesus as a participation in the darkness Jesus experienced in his own death and suffering--the dark silence of the Passion.
I am eager to read the book.
