Mother Teresa's Dark Night of the Soul

A great deal of media coverage seems primed to hit over publication of Mother Teresa's private letters detailing her spiritual dryness over half a century of ministry. I tend to chalk this up to the classical "Dark Night of the Soul" idea, that those in regular and intimate communication with God don't always feel great about it, and that the mystery of suffering hits even the holiest among us. Some surprise is mentioned that Teresa seemed to feel this for so long, with no apparent respite, but I say that the problem with invading someone's private letters is that we don't know what went unrecorded, the single day of ecstasy or consolation so great that she didn't want to tell anyone about it.

The "Atheist Chic" movement is quick to say Teresa "realized" religion was a joke and that's why she spent half a century in spiritual pain. I would answer this with an only slightly less subversive idea; perhaps Teresa realized a great deal of pain over the lack of social justice in the world, specifically how the Christian Church contributes to much of this. Given the state of Christianity today, the days of mystics in ecstasy might well be finished, and perhaps this is a good thing. Running a hospice for AIDS victims is surely noble, but it might well cause one to reflect more on the type of "Christian morality" that influenced people's sexual decisions. Being the most famous nun in the world might well cause some painful doubt about the position of women in the world and in the church.

I don't mean to suggest that Teresa was tormented by a nagging, closeted liberalism, but rather that what we often dismiss as ideology might actually have a deeper spiritual significance that is unavoidable in the end. If one accepts the Natural Law framework that supports a theology of mystics and saintliness, the nagging subconscious realization that how Nature had been formally defined didn't seem to match everyday human reality might well cause anyone spiritual pain. Even a saint.