Letters Reveal Mother Teresa's Secret

[AJ]

Letters Reveal Mother Teresa's Secret

(Aug. 24) In life, she was an icon for believers of God's work on Earth. Her ministry to the poor of Calcutta was a world-renowned symbol of religious compassion. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mother Teresa had a calling, she told CBS News in a rare interview, based on unquestioned faith.
"They are all children of God, loved and created by the same heart of God."

But now, it emerges that Mother Teresa was so doubtful of her own faith that she feared she was being a hypocrite, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. In a new book that compiles letters she wrote to friends, superiors and confessors, her doubts are obvious.

Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the spirit leaves her.
"Where is my faith?" she writes. "Even deep down  there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be God " please forgive me."


Eight years later, she's still looking for the belief she's lost.
"Such deep longing for God," she writes. " repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal."

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she says, is a mask.

"What do I labor for?" she asks. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

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Maybe...., as I've suspected.... that "Eonian life" as the Scriptures call it - that new life from God, that we saints experience in the here and now.... is not all that many crack it up to be.

We've all had our highs and lows in the Spirit, even as Mother Teresa did.

I guess what I am trying to say is.....I would not want to live forever, endlessly, eternally - with this highs and lows in the Spirit, that I've experienced the last 60 years - known as "Eonian life."
 
"Eonian life" as I perceive it now, is only for this age....
The Scriptures spoke of Jesus Christ having the fulness of the Spirit....while we the Saints, only have a taste of the Spirit.

Therefore, who would want to live forever, with just having a taste of God's Spirit? 

I do believe that "life" begets more "life", and it will grow greater and greater as we experience the presence of God in the eons to come.

Thus, I wait, eagerly anticipating a more glorious "life"....even "life's to come."


Just some random thoughts, today AJ.

[mrsnacks]

Good thoughts. But whatever happens will happen. A Mother Theresa once said. In the next age we enter , our lives here will seem like one bad night in an inconvenient hotel. I agree with her from the perspective that the glory that is in store for us cannot compare with what God has for us. There will be no more tears, no pain, no sorrow. No more " death." And that is good enough for me.

[lovetruth]

Jesus said,"Father, why have You forsaken Me?"

feeling this doesn't mean you have failed spiritually.  it can mean you're dying for others to live. 

i wonder about these statements of hers, though.  there are many she wrote that are also rich in faith.  i have had many times of doubt.  i'd hate to have those publicized.  there are also people who have come through very dark times like she describes to very rich faith, even in the midst of great sufferings.

we look ahead to the fulfillment of the deposit.  we have a living Hope.  that is the anchor for our souls, not whether we sense God within us.

today i'm doing extra work that i know will please my hubby.  i'm wiped out and it's not fun, but i'm doing it nonetheless.  the payoff will come when i see how pleased he is and when i see the way it blesses his kids.

sometimes all you can do is hope.  many, many people don't even have that.  we're rich.

[Tony N]

Mother T. did her whole ministry to the poor only as a means of fire insurance.

I watched an interview with her and she was asked why she went to all the trouble to help the poor. Her response nearly made me fall out of my seat. She took Matthew 25:31-46 and told the interviewer without so much as flinching that Jesus told us that if we don't visit the sick, help the poor etc. etc. that we will go to hell for ever.

That is the problem with taking scripture and misapplying it. Lucky for the poor. So what is she going to tell God? Will she say "God, the reason I did it was I loved them so much"? or "God I was helping them to save my own skin"?

Tony

[Keith]

That is the problem with taking scripture and misapplying it. Lucky for the poor. So what is she going to tell God? Will she say "God, the reason I did it was I loved them so much"? or "God I was helping them to save my own skin"?

Is it any worse to misapply scripture and live a life of service to others, than to misapply scripture to judge another's actions? Do you really think that no matter what she says, God will say anything other than "Well done thou good and faithful servant!"

Blessings Keith.

[hopeful]

Remind me to burn all my old journals tomorow.   

[Tony N]

That is the problem with taking scripture and misapplying it. Lucky for the poor. So what is she going to tell God? Will she say "God, the reason I did it was I loved them so much"? or "God I was helping them to save my own skin"?

Is it any worse to misapply scripture and live a life of service to others, than to misapply scripture to judge another's actions? Do you really think that no matter what she says, God will say anything other than "Well done thou good and faithful servant!"

Blessings Keith.

Hi Keith,
I guess it all comes down to motive. What was our motive. May I ask this question without giving offense?: Why would God say to Theresa, "Well done for you did it all to save your own skin rather than for the reason of loving those wretches"?

I think it is just as bad, as you so well point out, Keith, should someone misapply scripture and help someone, as it is to misapply scripture and judge another's actions. Both are error and will not be the basis of reward before our Father.

I guess it also comes down to this motive: Some Christians say: "If all are going to be saved, why try to live a good life since all will be saved anyway?" But this reveals the darkness of their heart. In other words, the only reason for living a good life (according to them) is if the threat of eternal hell is hanging over one's head. Forget about the real good motive which is: loving others because God first loved us, and loving others and living a good life because that is the loving thing to do.

Just some thoughts, bro.
Tony

[Cardinal]

Remind me to burn all my old journals tomorow.   

  I'm with you ,Hopeful, LOL.....I should have permanent scars on my knees from God pulling me up out of the pit so many times 

[hopeful]

Yeah...
Ya know sometimes I get in the unloading mode
and that's all you'll see in my journal. 
I might not write down the victories- but they are there! 
Then again there will be revelation seasons where my journal will be overflowing with glories seen but I might not mention the anguish of this earthly realm...
Journals, letters to friends or better yet, forum entries are not the whole story of what's happening in a person's heart and life!
They are only glimpses.
 

[reFORMer]

   Hundreds of years ago lighter skinned peoples invaded India which even today has well beyond a thousand indigenous groups with their own languages.  The fairer complexioned Brahmins imposed the caste system to justify enslaving the darker natives.  When Christians arrived they taught these poor "untouchables," and women as well, how to read, giving them self respect and tools for self determination.  Rather than human rights and the economics of losing their slaves, important Hindus pretended it was a religious problem.  They outlawed converting anyone to Christianity and froze the number of missionaries that were allowed in the country.  Though the castes have been officially outlawed, when an untouchable is born yet today, he's given a little plot of land and expected to stay, working all his life for his master who is supposed to be more advanced along the path of reincarnations.
   A girl who is not theologically erudite, not committed to Biblical authority but to hierarchical religious authority, gets caught up in a movement of many people reaching out in good works to help those in need.  Often that help was not much more than the level of the poorest they received.  While there are many groups having a more or less Christian posture that have developed a variety of traditions for belief and practice not authorized by God's revelation, she is in the Roman Catholic religious sect which has a virtual conundrum of diverse paths to salvation.  It is particularly easy therein to not have a clear understanding of the basic gospel.  Mix in the 1957 anti-conversion laws in India with other's in the Roman hierarchy directing her and we can be more understanding. 
   There are apologetic sites where the following quotes are pursued with a harsher view than seems warranted in the context of Teresa's life.  She did believe in Jesus, though in what seems to us a very truncated way overgrown with weeds.  Often, critics, for all the waving of credentialled knowledge behind their desks, have never found motivation to comfort a single soul dying from poverty and disease, much less make a career of it.  I once wrote to an apologetic site that one of my aims in life was to be so used of God and such a blessing to mankind that it would become my privilege to be slandered by them.  We must each of us stand before God and be judged by Him.  I don't think we can be excused by claiming we gave our mind away to some group or a particular individual so didn't exercise our Divinely granted ability to reason or our responsibility to be personally led by the Holy Ghost.  Also remember, we are not justified by what Christ does in us.  We are justified by what God has done in Christ.

   "We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God's presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men -- simply better -- we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life -- his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation."---Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations, and Prayers by Mother Teresa, pp. 81-82

---Direct quotations from her speech in October 1984 at "The Worldwide Retreat for Priests":
    (a) "At the word of a priest, that little piece of bread becomes the body of Christ, the Bread of Life."
    (b) "Without a priest, without Jesus going with them, our sisters couldn't go anywhere."
    (c) "When the priest is there, then can we have our altar and our tabernacle and our Jesus. Only the priest put Jesus there for us. ... Jesus wants to go there, but we cannot bring him unless you first give him to us. This is why I love priests so much. We could never be what we are and do the things we do without you priests who first bring Jesus to us."
    (d) "Mary ... is our patroness and our Mother, and she is always leading us to Jesus."

   When "Mother" Teresa died, her longtime friend and biographer Naveen Chawla said that he once asked her bluntly, "Do you convert?" She replied, "Of Course I convert.  I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant.  Once you've found God, it's up to you to decide how to worship him."  ("Mother Teresa Touched Other Faiths."  Associated Press, 9/7/97.)

[Keith]

If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life -- his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation."-

I say again, that the first words I suspect that she heard were "Well done thou good and faithful servant!"

She is not responsible for revelation or understanding that she was not given. It seems clear that she lived her life true to her beliefs, and how many of us can say that?

Blessings Keith.

[Tony N]

Paul said:  "And if ever I should be morselling out all my possessions, and if I should be giving up my body, that I should be boasting, yet may have no love, in nothing do I benefit" (1Co 13:3).

She did it for fire insurance, not love.

[97531]

Paul said:  "And if ever I should be morselling out all my possessions, and if I should be giving up my body, that I should be boasting, yet may have no love, in nothing do I benefit" (1Co 13:3).

She did it for fire insurance, not love.

Tony

I cannot see how you can make the statement she only did it for fire insurance.  The verse you quote in many translations talks about charity.  Surely there was love for the poor and oppressed albeit from a wrong understanding.  From nothing else, her charitable deeds became legendary and surely a model to all of us how we are to act toward our fellow man.  What did the outward world see?  Did they see unrighteousness? Did they see piousness? Or did they perceive what she did was out of great love?

Taking one statement of hers and judging all she ever accomplished and/or did by that is wrong IMO.  At best what we know of the inner person, is scanty and we cannot make a fair judgement based upon that.

I googled to find some biographies and the list is long.  Here are a few

Mother Theresa's Biography

Mother Theresa -

Blessed Mother Theresa - Encyclopedia Britannica

Essay

Just reading through what she accomplished, the honors she received and the legacy she left behind, it is hard to consider this would have transpired if God was not with her efforts.

One central theme these commentaries pick up on was her total reliance on God.

Blessings

[arcticmonster2003]

It might be worth mentioning that the idea that she actually had TV interviews and was free to answer the questions. Knowing the catholic church a bit, I think it is fair to say that she might have been given the "answers" to the questions before the interview even started by someone higher up the hierarchy. Knowing that people associate mother Teresa directly with the catholic church, I don't think it is fair to say that she could have answered anyway that she wanted to.

Just my 

[Cardinal]

   My  . God told a friend of mine years ago, that His Spirit, His personality, was a "pure motive". With that definition, how many of us would stand up to scrutiny? God knows we don't have a pure motive. But as we are obedient to hear and obey whatever the Spirit tells us to do, our motive lines up with His and gradually He changes us from the inside out.

I remember the first time I realized that I was truly changed on the inside, was when a circumstance came about and my reaction and subsequent action in response was SO not me. I was actually shocked a little, because it had been so gradual a change I was not totally aware of it and yet it was obviously permanent, and I realized with a certainty that I was no longer the person that I was before. Indeed could not be; it was as if I had gone on a long trip and forgotten how to get back. I could not be that person again if I wanted to. I don't remember who she was anymore. And it all came about not out of trying to be a certain way, but out of following Him, obeying His Spirit.

Man tries to change men from the outside in, God changes men from the inside out. I personally don't think anyone could do the work she did the way that she did it, without the Spirit of God using her to do it. I could have never done care-giver oriented type of work, if the Spirit of God had not set me to service, because all men seek after their own (things) and not the things which be of Christ. I don't think she was any different. Her motive probably wasn't pure in the beginning, she probably did it to impress supervisors, and yes even for fire insurance from the way she would have been taught. But no one would not fall away from those reasons under such harrowing and disturbing circumstances, if the Spirit of God were not strengthening them and pushing them to do it. Blessings to all.........