[BalaGire]

I have just finished reading an article in this week's Time Magazine about Mother Teresa.

The introduction :

"Her Agony
A decade after Mother Teresa's death, her secret letters show that she spent almost 50 years without sensing the presence of God in her life. What does her experience teach us about the value of doubt?"

Apparently she was unable to speak about this absence of faith to her confessors in 1948 until one of them asked her to write down her confession.

This she continued to do all her life and these letters have now been published. In 1959 she asked that the letters she had written up to then, be destroyed but apparently they weren't. First question : I thought that anything revealed during a confession was not allowed to be made public.

Reading this article and the excerpts from Mother Teresa's writings I felt so confused. Was she a fraud? Or was she really a holy person who struggled on courageously in spite of the fact that she no longer felt the presence of Christ in her life? We all go through phases of doubt but she endured this state for over 50 years! There was only a short period after the death of Pope Pius in 1958 when she prayed to the dead pope for "proof that God is pleased with the Society" (I think she meant her Missionaries of Charity).

"And "then and there," she rejoiced, "disappeared the long darkness .. that strange suffering of 10 years." 5 weeks later she reported being "in the tunnel" again."

What do the fathers say about "dark nights of the soul"? Should we ask for proof of God's existence?

In 1959 she wrote : "What do I labour for? If there be no God - there can be no soul - if there be no Soul then Jesus - You also are not true".

Mother Teresa finally came to the conclusion that this "darkness" was the way God wanted her to share in some way Christ's agony when he cried "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

She also wrote : "I accept not in my feelings - but with my will, the Will of God - I accept his Will."

I realize this is a very difficult subject but, with the help of our Catholic friends on this forum, I believe that we could learn much i.e. why such a saintly woman had to go through such agony and the role of doubt in our religious life.

Effie

[immoceefe]

I worked for Mother Teresa in Calcutta for a couple of weeks, attended services at the monastery, met her briefly, met the priest of the house and had some interaction with him. There was something just slightly cockeyed about the whole thing, theologically. It was like everyone was out to prove something. There was a kind of underlying theme of triumphalism, based on what I think from an Orthodox perspective would be a somewhat skewed understanding of the role of suffering. The priest in particular I thought was way off kilter in a way I'm not going to go into, but it was really disturbing the way he treated young people, especially young women who came to work at the place. So it could be that Mother Teresa got some very bad spiritual advice over the years. Also, it seems to me to be more than just a bit appalling that her written confessions would be made public, against her wishes. I also had the perspective of some Anglicans who had had dealings with her, and you do not get the picture of some saintly person, but rather someone who was almost obssessively possessive. But we all have our quirks, even, perhaps especially saints.

[BalaGire]

Thanks Owen for your response.

What do our fathers say about this "dark night of the soul"? Is that how we refer to phases of doubt that most of us go through or is there another way of describing it.

In a lot of the books I have read, I am aware that a lot of people go through "dry" periods where there is a lack of desire to pray and we are told to pray anyway because the feeling is not important and the desire may be absent at the moment but that it will return.

But surely this is different from not believing in God at all.

I, too am appalled that her private confession letters have been made public.
Surely this is against the code concerning confessions.

Effie

[Ekrbcbvh]

Clearly, the heterodox Roman concept of 'the dark night of the soul' is not the same as the withdrawal of grace of which St Silouan and Elder Sophrony speak.

[Aeaefee]

Mother Teresa and her spirituality played a big part in my reversion to the Cahtholic Church. So much so that I soon joined her Order and spent about 3 and a half years in formation. I left right before taking vows.

With that said, I have already read the letters. I think she was authentic in her total gift of self to the Lord which was very radical. She never expected nor desired that the Congregation grow as it did, nor did she expect to become a world renowned figure. She used to pray that if the Congregation had become something that God had not intended it to become then let it dissipate. She only wanted to be faithful to what God had called her to. She was totally selfless.

I too am not understanding how it was that she went so many years with no light at all. This is definately not Orthodox. The saints of the Orthodox Church had to fight with devil and went many years without light but it eventually reaturned to them.

[18holesin]

Every saint I've ever read about suffered through a "Dark Night of the Soul", to quote St. John of the Cross. Everyone has these crises of faith. Everyone. Even Jesus cried, "My God! Why have You forsaken Me?"

"Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!" ((Mark 9:24)) is the desperate cry of all believers everywhere at some point in their lives. To find out that we are not alone in our cries for this mercy should be some comfort to all of us.

[BalaGire]

I need to understand what is meant when Roman Catholics use the term "dark night of the soul".

"The term and metaphysicality of the "dark night of the soul" was coined from the writings of Saint John of the Cross in the sixteenth century. Christian teachings explain the "dark night of the soul" as a spritual phenomenon (that comes in an episode or episodes) that is named as the second Divine purgation to sear off the imperfections that infect a soul. The subject feels spiritually, as if the shadow of Hell passes over them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_night_of_the_soul"

St. John of the Cross :

"In Chapter viii, St. John of the Cross begins to describe the Passive Night
of the senses, the principal aim of which is the purgation or stripping of
the soul of its imperfections and the preparation of it for fruitive union.
The Passive Night of Sense, we are told, is "common" and ˜"comes to many," whereas that of Spirit "is the portion of very few."[5] The one is "bitter and terrible" but "the second bears no comparison with it," for it is
"horrible and awful to the spirit." [6] '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''

Having described this Passive Night of Sense in Chapter viii, he explains
with great insight and discernment how it may be recognized whether any
given aridity is a result of this Night or whether it comes from sins or
imperfections, or from frailty or lukewarmness of spirit, or even from
indisposition or "humours" of the body. "

Link http://www.ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night.txt

The "passive night of sense" refers to beginners in spirituality who :


" would have God will that which they themselves will,
and are fretful at having to will that which He wills, and find it repugnant
to accommodate their will to that of God. Hence it happens to them that
oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and
pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they
themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by
themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which
He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will
for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it,
the same should lose it. [55]" This excerpt is also from the same link as above.

Therefore these "beginners" have to go through the first type of "dark night of the soul" to be cleansed, to be transformed into a likeness of Christ.

The full text is very interesting and very readable and it is too long for me to post any other excerpts. It explains clearly the Roman Catholic understanding of this.




What is our orthodox understanding of this phenomenon?

Is it the apparent "absence" of God - not that God disappears but that we, because of our sins, are no longer able to sense Him?

Christ was sinless so how does His lament " My God, My God why has Thou forsaken me" relate to the above understanding of the apparent "absence" of God.

I found the following on the site of the St. John Coptic Orthodox Church concerning this subject and the latest revelations concerning Mother Teresa.

http://blog.mystjohn.org/

"And meaningless is the last word you would think of to describe Mother Teresa. To help the poorest of the poor die with dignity was the greatest example of faith, particularly while you are suffering yourself, with doubts and with pain and with depression.

She continued to do the toughest job anyone could possibly do. And she did it to her dying day. Why? As she wrote to her spiritual advisor, she submitted to God. “I accept,” she wrote, “not in my feelings—but with my will, the Will of God—I accept His will.” I came to that realization in my own dark night of the soul a couple of years ago when two of my three kids had cancer.
The very essence of faith, you see, is believing even in the absence of evidence. And it is the only way we can know Christ. We can conclude rationally that God exists, that His Word is true, and that He has revealed Himself. But without that leap of faith, we will never know God personally or accept His will in Christ.

So what do the letters of Mother Teresa reveal? For one, they reveal the true cost of discipleship. To follow Christ is to embrace suffering and the Cross. And, at times, to say with Jesus, “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”

Certainly Mother Teresa took on the suffering of the world just as her Lord had done. And she demonstrated a kind of faith that few ever experience. But hers is a faith that will be a lasting witness to the world—when Christopher Hitchens and the media critics are long forgotten."

Is it the orthodox understanding that we need to go through these barren periods to separate the "dross from the gold" ?



Forgive me my ignorance but the Orthodox understanding of this subject interests me greatly and I would be grateful for any insights from all those much more knowledgeable than I on this forum.

Effie

[18holesin]

Christ was sinless so how does His lament " My God, My God why has Thou forsaken me" relate to the above understanding of the apparent "absence" of God.

Effie

I can only speak to this part, the rest is a bit more than I am willing to tackle. And for the record, I'm not looking for "depth" or what-have-you in this. I think people are making far too much of what is a pretty universal feeling--that we have been abandoned by God and He's left us to our own devices. That is my understanding of that verse as well. At that moment Christ shared in that universal loss for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. ((Hebrews 4:15)).

A "dark night of the soul" ((all the quotes notwithstanding but thank you for them)) is a spiritual desperation for some sort of tangible contact with God. We all have it. It doesn't make us less Christian ((as some Christians imply)) and it doesn't mean we are somehow admitting that God does not exist (9as some atheists have said outright)). It means that we are human, with all the flaws and needs thereof.

What is more important, IMO, is Mother Teresa's faithfulness and obedience in spite of her doubts and desperation. I find that far more interesting than the fact that she, like me, had some doubts and felt desperation.

JMO YMMV

[rassedgesse]

Christ was sinless so how does His lament " My God, My God why has Thou forsaken me" relate to the above understanding of the apparent "absence" of God.
Effie

From the book The feasts of the Lord by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos

"Christ's fourth saying on the Cross is the cry: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt.27,46). This saying must be interpreted in an orthodox way, within the interpretative analyses of the Holy Fathers of the Church, because otherwise it can be considered heretical. This is said because there are some scholastics and rationalists who try to interpret these words of Christ by maintaining that, if only for a few seconds, the divine nature abandoned the human nature on the Cross in order for Christ to feel the pain, the suffering from this abandonment.

In the first place this saying is connected with a psalm of David which is purely christological, since it refers to Christ's incarnation and His saving Passion, and which begins as follows: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Ps.22,1). This psalm is prophetic, because it reveals Christ's suffering on the Cross. Christ was not repeating it mechanically, but by the repetition He was fulfilling the prophecy. Of course the prophet's vision came first, and Christ said it in order for all the prophecies which had been spoken about Him to be fulfilled.

St. Gregory the Theologian, interpreting this cry of Christ, says that Christ was not abandoned either by His Father or by His own divinity, as if fearing the Passion and shrinking from the suffering of Christ. So what happened? By this cry Christ "stamps on Himself what is ours". In other words, at that moment Christ is speaking in our place. For we were those abandoned and overlooked and then assumed and saved by the Passion of the impassible One. And St. Cyril of Alexandria, interpreting this, says that "He abandoned understandings and forgiveness of the passion". Christ's kenosis, which began with His incarnation, reached its highest point. And this is called abandonment.

We have emphasis in previous analyses that in Christ the divine and human natures were united unchangeably, inseparably and indivisibly, according to the definition of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. This means that they have not been separated, are not separated, nor ever will be separated. And this is why we can partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. So this cry of Christ to the Father expresses our own cry at having lost communion with God through sin. Moreover, Christ was suffering for us." (pp. 226 - 227)

[biannaruh]

The Blessed Theophylact, in his commentary on the Gospels, says much the same thing.

[Ekrbcbvh]

I was taught by Father Zacharias to treasure those periods of dryness when we feel God is far from us, doesn't listen to us and our prayers seem so much breath wasted on the wind. If we keep faith and persevere, we shall receive grace, he said, because God sees our effort.

[BalaGire]

Thank you, Elizabet, a good post.

Effie

[BalaGire]

Nina, thanks. That explains things simply and clearly. And it has cleared up something that was troubling me in the past. I couldn't understand why he would say this, but the explantion you posted makes things clear.

Effie