By Mary DeTurris Poust

Catholics relate to Mother Teresa's struggle with dryness and faith

Secular news reports sensationalized the sister's spiritual turmoil

Revelations that Blessed Teresa of Calcutta suffered through a half century of spiritual doubt, emptiness and darkness -- a desolate period of her life that she documented in a series of letters to her spiritual directors -- stunned the world recently, setting off a flurry of news coverage that bordered on hysterical.

The secular media tried to grapple with the spiritual experience of the "dark night of the soul," often miscasting Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles as a complete lack of faith or even atheism. One news show went so far as to label their coverage of the issue: "Saint or Scandal?"

But to many Catholics, what seemed to the secular world to be devastating at best or scandalous at worst was seen as comforting and even heroic. Although the length and depth of her spiritual struggles may set Mother Teresa apart, she is in good company when it comes to battling the demons of doubt that have plagued so many of the Church's great saints. Perhaps that is why Catholics see her dark night not as a shock or an invalidation of her faith and her work but instead as a sign that this woman was more holy, albeit more human, than we believed her to be during her lifetime.

No shock to many

The media frenzy was set off in the days before the Sept. 4 release of "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light" (Doubleday, $22.95), a collection of Mother Teresa's correspondence with her confessors and spiritual directors over several decades. The book was compiled and edited by Mission of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator for Mother Teresa's cause for canonization. Father Kolodiejchuk, who was in Rome at press time and unavailable for an interview, previously released her letters in a 2003 study, "The Soul of Mother Teresa: Hidden Aspects of Her Interior Life."

So for many people within Church circles, the revelations were neither new nor shocking. Where the secular eye saw her spiritual struggle as a setback to her legacy, most Catholic experts viewed Mother Teresa's agonizing letters as the next phase of her ministry, setting her up as perhaps the defining saint of the 20th century.

"If Mother Teresa is a saint, and if every saint is sent to give us a message, then what is Mother Teresa's message to the Church at this time?" asked David Scott, author of "A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa" (Loyola, $18.95).

"The most profound experience of the 20th century was the absence of God. Where was he in the Holocaust, in the wars, during the Cold War? We had whole governments for the first time organized around atheism. There was this profound sense that God had somehow withdrawn from the world and left us to our own devices," Scott said. "Mother Teresa experienced in her own spiritual life all the anguish of the century in a way."

Scott told OSV that one of the key points of the Mother Teresa's struggle is that it was kept hidden while she was alive and would have remained hidden if she had had her way. Mother Teresa, who died Sept. 5, 1997, and was beatified by the Church on Oct. 19, 2003, requested that her correspondence be destroyed, but the Church opted instead to make her writings public. The result is a stunning collection that expresses in Mother Teresa's own words a decades-long spiritual struggle she referred to as "torture."

"The faith always gets tested. The higher up the spiritual ladder you go, the harder the spiritual tests," said Scott. "She did all these great, heroic things. Then you realize her private prayer life was anguished. There is something about that that is so profound, and it would not have been effective to know that when she was alive. It would have neutralized her."

The 'dark night'

The Catholic faith is centered on Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, who in the Garden of Gethsemane asked to be spared the trials he would face and from the cross cried out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me." So it stands to reason, at least according to Catholic theologians, that any person of faith who wants to follow Christ must be prepared to suffer. For those further along the spiritual path, that suffering is often intense and interior.

"Death is darkness, and darkness means death to everything about me," said Jesuit Father Raymond Gawronski, who is on the faculty of St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver.

He told OSV that Americans in particular have a hard time with this concept because our egocentric culture puts individuals first rather than God first. There is a "fundamental divide," he said, "between those for whom God is a big man in the sky with a big beard that the atheists keep attacking and the true God, who is utterly mysterious and ineffable, whose light is so intense it feels like darkness."

"When we talk about the dark night of the soul, it's all, in a way, rather simple," Father Gawronski said. "If you want to find God, you have to go to the desert."

Experiencing hell

According to her letters, Mother Teresa's desert experience was something she likened to an experience of hell, making her doubt the faith that was at the center of her life. Some in the secular world have taken her words to mean that she had abandoned God, but, in fact, the opposite was true. She never abandoned God, even when she felt he had abandoned her.

"She showed up every day in prayer," said Scott. "That's the secret of faith -- to be able to show up even when you are not getting anything out of it."

Carol Zaleski, a professor of world religions at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., told OSV in an e-mail interview that it may very well be that Mother Teresa's dark night will one day take its place in Catholic hagiography alongside the stigmata of St. Francis.

"She sought so ardently to live in conformity to Christ that she was marked with the wounds of Christ's suffering and descent into death," said Zaleski, who wrote about Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles in 2003. "This is a distinctively Catholic expression of solidarity with Christ, and it may well be some generations before it is fully understood."

Zaleski said that the confusion and misreading of this experience in the secular world has to do with a culture that is aware of only two possible religious attitudes: "skepticism or credulity."

"Some think that faith can be measured by the subjective happiness and well-being it brings," she said. "But authentic faith entails a radically different scale of values; it coexists with, and is often strengthened by, profound struggles with doubt and longing for a seemingly 'absent' God."

We all work through 'the same old slime'

Mother Teresa was a not only a Catholic holy woman but a public icon as well. Images of her lifting up babies or cradling the dying are etched into the minds of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Now, as some in the secular media attempt to label her a fraud because of her spiritual doubts, Catholics may be faced with questions about whether she still has relevance.

"They try to make it out as if she and all religionists are fakers," said Msgr. David Fulton, an assistant professor at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore and pastor of Our Lady of Victories Church in Baptistown, N.J. "I say that the three Teresas -- of Calcutta, Lisieux and Avila -- all experienced the same thing."

Msgr. Fulton said that Catholics can look at the spiritual struggles of Sts. Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux, both doctors of the Church, in order to better understand Mother Teresa. All three experienced intense feelings of doubt and meaninglessness, something that is part of the human condition and often part of the spiritual journey.

"We all find ourselves in this kind of pickle as we go through life, where people of faith will always have nagging doubts and those who are without faith will always have nagging possibilities," he said.

What set Mother Teresa apart from those who truly do lose their faith was her knowledge on a deep level that she was not on her faith journey alone, that other people could "row the boat for her."

"We are all struggling through the same old slime. We really have to help one another through it," Msgr. Fulton said, adding that rather than cast her as a phony, Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles will make her not only a patron saint in heaven but a more approachable role model for those on earth.

What to do if it's you in this situation

When Catholics talk about the "dark night of the soul," they are usually referring to a period of intense spiritual struggle -- an emptiness in prayer, an absence of God. Experts say that when we experience periods of dryness or doubt, the answer is not to pull away from prayer but to allow ourselves to wade deeper into what lies at the heart of the Catholic faith: Jesus Christ.

"The first thing I do is go over the Passion and give thanks for every aspect of it," said Dominican Father Vincent Serpa, chaplain for California-based Catholic Answers. "It's a difficult thing to do, but by the time I get to his death, my attention is on him and not me. I have peace, and it's at that point I do a prayer of petition."

Father Serpa said that a reality check for anyone in a spiritually dry place is looking at a crucifix, giving thanks and "letting it in."

"He wasn't having a lot of consolations as he hung on that cross. He didn't feel close to the Father. He just felt pain. He didn't feel loving, and yet that was the greatest act of love we know," he said of Jesus. "God reveals more of himself hanging on the cross than anywhere else. It is to the crucified Savior that we must always go. That is where we're fed. That gives us perspective."

Lay Catholics respond

OSV asked Catholic laypeople about their reaction to the news of Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles. Here are their answers:

"It reminds me that she was human like you and me, and that she experienced the same trials of faith as the rest of us. That she continued to do the work of Christ and build Christ's kingdom in the midst of such spiritual suffering is truly amazing. É Her works are almost more amazing now in light of her personal suffering and spiritual suffering."

-- Lani Candelora, Sacred Heart-St. Francis de Sales Parish, Bennington, Vt.

"The revelation that Mother Teresa suffered a spiritual drought, or 'dark night of the soul,' simply validates, on a hidden spiritual plane, the work, which the world saw her accomplish on a visible level. In order to do the work to which she was called, Mother Teresa had to join Christ, as it were, on the cross. From this vantage point, as we know, she identified with Christ's physical sufferings."

-- Elizabeth Mitchell, Trinity Academy, Pewaukee, Wis.

"I have come to view her as a much more 'heroic' spiritual person than anyone ever thought. I believe that God calls most souls to eventual consolation in their spiritual journey, but to some special souls he sends the grace of spiritual aridity, emptiness, dryness, because for some reason this is the 'way' that will draw them closer to God. É Mother Teresa's vulnerability now makes her truly human."

-- Ken Giovanelli, St. Mary's Church, Lancaster, Pa.

"This does not change my view of Mother Teresa in any way. I believe that all of us have periods of questioning or 'dark times.' Even though Mother Teresa felt she was without God, her actions did not prove that. I believe that our actions many times speak louder than our words. I don't think she could do the things that she did without God's presence in her life."

-- Diane Dowd, St. Vincent's Catholic Church, Salt Lake City, Utah

"A couple of things struck me. The first is that she wouldn't have a struggle if she didn't believe in God. The second is that all of us experience a struggle, a darkness, and it's from that darkness that we grow in our faith. If you look at the lives of other saints who have gone through dark periods, like St. Therese of Lisieux, for example, they experience this more intensely than many of us do because of their sanctity and because of their intense closeness to God."

-- Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, Immaculate Heart Church, Portland, Ore.

"I find it very comforting to know how human she was. Some people might look at the glass as half empty and think that if she doubted God how could I ever not doubt God. She had moments of struggle, but she never gave in to it. Her trust was far greater than any doubt. She allowed herself to suffer because she wanted to unite herself so intimately to Christ's suffering."

-- Mary Dornbush, St. Margaret's Church, Pearl River, N.Y.

In the company of saints

Mother Teresa's desert experience is not a unique spiritual struggle. Some of the Church's greatest saints experienced dryness doubt, and, in the most extreme cases, the "dark night of the soul," a phrase coined by St. John of the Cross, perhaps the most famous of the dark night saints.

"The dark night is a mark of and an episode in the lives of extraordinary saints, who, like Mother Teresa, have offered themselves unreservedly to God only to find the ecstasies of communion give way to periods of utter desolation," said Carol Zaleski, professor of world religions at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

Among those saints who have experienced this kind of spiritual struggle are St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists; St. Jane Frances de Chantal, foundress of the Visitandines; St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa's namesake.

"As St. John of the Cross described it, the dark night is a purifying experience, during which the soul is united to God on a deeper level than that of ordinary knowledge or intuition," said Zaleski. "The agony of doubt and desolation is a way of sharing in Christ's Passion and sacrificially identifying with all destitute souls."

Mary DeTurris Poust is a contributing editor to OSV.