Mother Teresa’s Mistake

The way the Catholic Church, and the American media, have been spinning revelations about Mother Teresa’s more than half century long “dark night of the soul” is downright sinful. One expects propaganda in politics, but with religious matters, party lines are odious.

Mother Teresa’s letters, and the transparent religious propaganda surrounding their publication, bring forth the deepest questions. What does it mean to be spiritual? What are beliefs, and why do they stand in the way of spiritual growth? What was Jesus’ mission? And how can we combine the timeless and the temporal?

Rather than bringing crumbling Christian beliefs into question however, Mother Teresa’s doubts and hypocrisy are being spun as proof of her sainthood. She was “running on empty and still doing all these wonderful works,” the Church says. It’s enough to make a contemplative shout

Exploiting Mother Teresa’s letters (which she asked be destroyed) for its own agenda, the Catholic Church is merely defending its medieval worldview. In doing so, it, along with a complicit media, it makes it even harder for ordinary people to have a sound foundation for a healthy spiritual life.

It’s a circular argument, if not a vicious circle, to maintain, as the Vatican priestly class does, that Mother Teresa’s saintly example is confirmed because, “Unlike other saints, she was going through the day without a lot of consolation from her prayers.” The vast majority of people are not receiving consolation and finding new strength from these revelations, but rightly experiencing even greater doubt.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since doubt breaks up the accretions of belief, and spurs questions that can lead to genuine insight. But though doubt is an essential daily tonic, it is something if taken in too great a dose, paralyzes and becomes a poison.

In Mother Teresa’s words, “the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” That proves she was on the wrong track, not the fast track to sainthood. Whether her vocation to work with the poor in India was true or not, it was wrong for her to sacrifice her spiritual life on the altar of belief, or even good works. By her own admission, Mother Teresa’s heart was not a wellspring, but a desert.

Good works are fine, but they are no substitute for spiritual development, nor are they necessarily a path to it, as activists the world over can attest. True spiritual development is in the here and now, in this life, not the reward of some projected idea of the hereafter. Heaven and hell, if they exist, are not places of reward and punishment, but simply consequences of how we live on earth.

The point of the “dark night of the soul” is to pass through it, into the light of understanding. But Mother Teresa’s darkness lasted until her death. It would be a terrible thing if her example were to stand, since not only many people, but humankind itself is going through a dark night of the soul at present.

Nothing has been more harmful to the spiritual development of people in the West than the deification of Jesus, seconded only by the twisting of his physical suffering into “dying for our sins.”

Suffering is not noble and good; it’s a waste. Jesus lived in terms of joy, not suffering. He was not sent and meant to die on the cross, and his physical suffering didn’t matter to him. Jesus’ words in the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—attest both the greatness of his faith unto death, and to the failure of his mission, which was to transform the human heart.

We cannot know Mother Teresa’s motivations, what kept her going year after year despite the fact that “there [was] nothing but emptiness and darkness” in her. But her letters, and the contradiction, indeed hypocrisy, between her inner life and outer works, are disturbing, not ennobling.

Even the patron saint of “the dark night of the soul,” St. John of the Cross, did not end on such a bleak note, but with these words:

“I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.”

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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