Excerpts from The Private Writings of the ‘Saint of Calcutta’: Mother Teresa Come be My Light "As for me what will I tell you? I have nothing – since I have not got Him whom my heart and soul longs to possess. Aloneness is so great. From within and from without I find no one to turn to. I can speak to no one and even if I do, nothing enters my soul. If there is hell, this must be one. How terrible it is to be without God – no prayer – no faith – no love. The only thing that remains is the conviction that the work is His – that the Sisters and the Brothers are His.” (250)
Who would believe that these are the words from such a ‘spiritual’ person as Mother Teresa? That she, of all people, would have faced the most terrible suffering of all? That of not having the presence of God, whom she loved and longed for above all things in the world. I was shocked at reading Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual guides (what this book is about) which explicitly detail her experiences of not being able to feel God’s presence all the while she lived out her convictions and a life that changed so many others. Perhaps more than any other contemporary figure, her experience brought me to understand what it means to imitate Christ – to suffer with him, to die on the cross with him – to a completely different level. The comparisons she finally made to understand that her unique experience echoed that of her savior experienced on the cross when he bore the sins of the world and God turned away from him. That to understand what it means to do unto the least of these, to understand poverty, she would have to experience not only material poverty, but this kind of spiritual poverty for over 55 years! It is amazing, it is incredible and it has my head spinning.
She lived her life following her convictions, even when she couldn’t “feel” God’s presence she held on – and what remarkable results she achieved. Lives changed. Souls awakened. The consciousness of the world stirred. But Mother Teresa never aimed to win the Nobel Peace Prize or the other numerous prestigious awards that she won, no one like that ever does. She was simply living out God’s calling for her life. Living it out, meant doing things one at a time, and it was the day-to-day living that made Mother Teresa stand out and her work successful. It’s what made her life credible.
Bringing it back to home, I have lately been thinking about my sister. I think of my sister and the influence she is having on the teenagers that she is counseling at church. There is a boy who is blind because of a degenerative disease of the brain in her group. He always comes to the events even if he can’t really do them. Every time I hear about him, my heart breaks and I think how great the work that my sister is a part of, is. Sometimes I feel ashamed. How many lives am I changing? Sometimes I feel like I am not even changing my own.
I work downtown Vancouver and during my walks at lunch I see many affluent people. I also come across many homeless people on the street corners begging for money. I get cold being outside for thirty minutes a day dressed in my goose feathers. Sam’s question echo in my mind, “so Anna what are you doing to help the homeless?” There are days where I don’t succeed in pushing these questions from my thoughts, and I ask myself if it is enough that I “study it”. Poverty occurs on my levels and I don’t know if we can judge what is more serious. I think there is poverty in everyone. I know there is poverty in me. I am poor when I still struggle with my own adequacy, moving beyond how I look or my pieces of paper, or who likes me. I have complained about my family and living at home. I dream of my dreams of helping people and building community and good social policies. What is that though…
"Do we know who our poor are? Do we know our neighbour, the poor of our own area? It is so easy for us to talk and talk about the poor of other places. Very often we have the suffering, we have the lonely, we have the people – old, unwanted, feeling miserable – and they are near us and we don’t even know them. We have no time to even smile at them."
Tuberculosis and cancer are not the great diseases. I think a much greater disease is to be unwanted, unloved. The pain that these people suffer is very difficult to understand, to penetrate. I think this is what our people all over the world are going through, in every family, in every home.” (206)
I hope by recognizing the poverty in me, I will spur both my mind and heart into action and live a life in response to the poverty around me. That’s what I want. I pray that I can develop that kind of faith to believe when it is dark, that kind of resiliency to keep walking when the road gets tough, and that kind of courage to live out my convictions.
Here’s to 2008: a year of life and living.
Molly's Christmas scarf | Christmas tree at the National Art Gallery, Ottawa
All covered up at snowy Mount Tremblant | Me
