What Happened to Mother Teresa?

Time magazine’s “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith” blew my mind.

The article, by David Van Biema, analyzes a collection of letters by Mother Teresa, which are being published for the first time in the upcoming book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. In these letters, which cover most of her adult life, Mother Teresa laments that she does not feel Jesus’s love or presence. She is aware of the painful contrast between her inner reality and the public image she projects, and between her sense of “emptiness” and the experience she had earlier in life of Jesus’s presence and guidance.

Jesuit James Martin is quoted by Biema as saying that Mother Teresa’s letters “may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor. It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone.”

I would hesitate to go quite as far as Martin does in extolling the universality of Mother Teresa’s faith journey.

Mother Teresa’s spiritual life is grounded in Catholicism. She is writing about the absence of Jesus. Her reaction to her sense of Jesus’s absence, in the extreme turmoil it causes her, in her decision to hide this turmoil from the public, in her ultimate analysis of this suffering, is strongly informed by Catholicism.

That said, people of faith in many traditions will be fascinated by her letters, recognizing the questions about faith, doubt, witness and service that transcend the particularities of any one tradition. Time calls in a host of experts to offer opinions in the article, but really, we don’t have to be psychologists to grapple with the problems posed in Mother Teresa’s letters.

As I read the article, so many questions came to my mind: How did Mother Teresa’s work in the clinics impact her relationship with Jesus? The article notes that her sense of Jesus’s absence came almost immediately after beginning her outreach to the very poor in Calcutta. About nine years ago, I visited several of the clinics in Calcutta started by Mother Teresa. It was shocking to see the meager conditions in these clinics and the extreme suffering that brought people there. I can only imagine the shock Mother Teresa felt, moving to Calcutta from Ireland, taking on voluntary poverty, and serving those who were among the very poorest of the poor.

What kept her going? How did she find the hope to continue her work?

Mother Teresa continued to believe in Jesus and to seek a relationship with him, even as she was in despair over his absence from her life. What bolstered her faith in Jesus?

How did Mother Teresa’s ideas about gender roles shape her understanding of her relationship with Jesus, and of her suffering? In her description of a conversation she had with Jesus, he refers to her as his “Spouse.” How did she understand their marriage, and her obligations as a “Spouse,” as he grew distant from her? Martin begins to get at this question in his comparing Mother Teresa to a spouse caring for an ill loved one, and I am hopeful that feminist scholars will weigh in on these questions as well.

When Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light is published next week, all of us will have the chance to read her letters in full and interpret their meaning. Mother Teresa is not only a religious figure who lived a life of incredible service, but also a cultural icon. The publication of her letters will inspire conversation across the world about faith and doubt.