An interesting follow up on Mother Teresa
An interesting brief about Mother Teresa recently cropped up on the wire. It is, in my opinion, a good follow up to my previous blog post about the reported “crisis of the soul” experienced by the beloved nun in the years before her death.
Here’s the story, written by Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller with the Religion News Service:
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Friends say Mother Teresa’s darkness was a test of faith
LATROBE, Pa. (RNS) To the people who knew and loved Mother Teresa of
Calcutta, the darkness she wrote about in her memoirs was not a crisis of faith, but a trial of her faith.
“When people see the story of her great faith and love, they see that kind of experience that’s necessary for someone on this mystic way to Jesus Christ,” the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, editor of “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” said at a recent conference held atSaint Vincent
College.
“Remembrances of Mother Teresa of
Calcutta by Her Family and Friends” drew nearly 1,000 people from around the world. They included her successor as head of the Missionaries of Charity, Sister Nirmala Joshi, and the Rev. Robert Conroy, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers and a founder of the I Thirst Movement, started in 2006 in response to one of the driving forces of Mother Teresa’s passion for the poor.
“She hears Christ call out, ‘I thirst,’ and she asks how she can satiate the thirst of God,” he said. “The Lord was asking her to become a victim of love.”
Mother Teresa was united with Christ in sharing his feeling of abandonment in theGarden of
Gethsemane and in “sharing in his suffering,” Kolodiejchuk said. “She shared the suffering of our poor by being one with them to redeem them.”
Kolodiejchuk has been asked if Mother Teresa’s spiritual darkness was actually depression. “I asked a psychiatrist to go through her memoirs, and he said they were not characteristic of the symptoms of depression,” he said. “She showed cheerfulness aside from (when she was) in prayer, and there was not a withdrawal.”
Sister Nirmala was one of many who spoke about Mother Teresa’s sense of humor, laughter and joy, and the light in her eyes. “I felt like she did not belong on earth,” she said.
Mother Teresa’s famous smile, Kolodiejchuk said, was not false. “She had come to love the darkness,” he said. “It was part of the spirit of her work. She lived all those years in pure love.”
The reunion was organized by St. Vincent College President H. James Towey, a friend and former legal counsel to Mother Teresa.
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Dear Friends:
I am trying to find out where I can purchase the DVD of Remembraces of Mother Theresa of Calcutta? Canyou help me. Thanks.