Mother Teresa and her ‘dark night’

Mother Teresa died in 1997, and burst again onto the world stage 10 years later with publication of her letters and writings in Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta.

The book caught the world’s spotlight as writers seized on newly revealed secrets about her spiritual struggles and deep interior darkness.

The anti-God lobby said the revelations proved God does not exist.

Writer Christopher Hitchens called her “a confused old lady [who] …ceased to believe.”

But, of course, there’s more to her story than that.

What was her situation? How did a girl from Skopje in Macedonia (now Albania) become a universally acclaimed saint?

The Christian answer is immediate: She dedicated her life to God’s people through Christ. She saw Jesus in every situation, in every person. That still doesn’t answer how she did it.

If Mother Teresa stopped believing in God, was she clinically depressed? Or, was she depressed because of spiritual struggles or other experiences?

Did she experience the “Dark Night” known to mystics?

Continue reading about Mother Teresa’s Dark Night for a consideration of some of the themes in her writings that have led to so many questions.

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