Dark Night - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz Catholic News New Zealand Wed, 06 Apr 2016 20:33:01 +0000 en-NZ hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-cathnewsfavicon-32x32.jpg Dark Night - CathNews New Zealand https://cathnews.co.nz 32 32 70145804 Mother Teresa was heroic, and for reasons not well known https://cathnews.co.nz/2016/04/08/81615/ Thu, 07 Apr 2016 17:13:26 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=81615

There are many things about Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta that could be called heroic - her tireless service to the world's most rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live the Gospel, just to name a couple. But the priest charged with overseeing her path to sainthood said that Read more

Mother Teresa was heroic, and for reasons not well known... Read more]]> There are many things about Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta that could be called heroic - her tireless service to the world's most rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live the Gospel, just to name a couple.

But the priest charged with overseeing her path to sainthood said that for him, one thing stands out above all the rest: her experience of spiritual darkness and what she described as feeling totally abandoned by God for the majority of her life.

"The single most heroic thing is exactly her darkness. That pure living, that pure, naked faith," Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator for Mother Teresa's canonization cause, told CNA in an interview.

Fr. Kolodiejchuk is a priest of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, founded by Mother Teresa in 1989.

By undergoing the depth and duration of the desolation she experienced and doing everything that she did for others in spite of it, "that's really very heroic," he said.

Pope Francis recently approved the second and last miracle needed in order to declare Mother Teresa a saint, and has set the date of her canonization for Sept. 4, 2016 - the day before her feast day.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910 in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Sisters of Loretto at the age of 17, but later left after she felt what she called "an order" from God to leave the convent and to live among the poor.

She went on to found several communities of both active and contemplative Missionaries of Charity, which include religious sisters, brothers, and priests.

The first community of active sisters was founded in 1950. An order of active brothers was founded nearly 20 years later in 1968. Then two contemplative orders came, one of women (in 1976) and one of men (in 1979). Continue reading

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Mother Teresa was heroic, and for reasons not well known]]> 81615 Mother Teresa and her 'dark night' https://cathnews.co.nz/2011/09/02/mother-teresa-and-her-dark-night/ Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:32:01 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=10371

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 Read more

Mother Teresa and her ‘dark night'... Read more]]> 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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Mother Teresa and her ‘dark night']]> 10371