Faith Meets Life: What would Mother Teresa Do?
The current issue of Time has Mother Teresa on its cover. The article inside reviews the new book on her life, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.
Inside the book reviewer David van Biema finds decades worth of letters written by the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa founded that world-renowned mission to the desperately poor of Calcutta. For that she received a Nobel prize in 1979. The Catholic Church has beatified her and she is a highly respected for her life of Christian devotion and activism.
The book, however, describes a Teresa that not many expect to find. Most assume that she usually felt very close to God. However, she wrote for many years of her dark interior struggle. She laboured day-after-day to touch and improve the lives of children and the chronically poor as something that Jesus Christ called her to do. But at the same time, she did not feel his nearness. She desired a personal intimacy with God, but more often than not, felt his absence.
The Time article seeks to make sense of this. How could a person, so devoted to God and to others, feel so distant from him for so long?
One explanation considered in the article is that she was a deluded soul who was unwilling to admit that God doesn't exist. Clinging to the belief that he does helped Mother Teresa make sense of the world, giving her purpose.
Another way to understand Teresa's experience (that van Biema explores at greater length) is that she experienced in a more extreme way what many Christian believers, including the famous saints, often find. There are times of feeling very close to God. And there are times when the feelings are far different.
The spirituality that Jesus taught focused hardly at all on feelings. The factor that is most constant in his advice for living was understanding in what God called you to do and to simply follow that calling. And the focus on that calling was always a double focus: to honour God at all times and to express that honouring by helping others.
I think that that double calling is key for every person — to help others all through life as a way of living as the Creator made us to live.
There are some great ways for students to explore that calling. The chaplains' office will have opportunities for students to get involved in assisting others. There, the spiritual dimension, the God connection, will not be hidden. The FSU will have opportunities through the year for helping others where the spiritual aspect will not get attention, but where this may be part of any student's reality who participates.
Finally in the London community there are many churches, Catholic and Protestant that have programs for helping people in the region. Likely, Mother Teresa would recommend checking them out.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Inside the book reviewer David van Biema finds decades worth of letters written by the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa founded that world-renowned mission to the desperately poor of Calcutta. For that she received a Nobel prize in 1979. The Catholic Church has beatified her and she is a highly respected for her life of Christian devotion and activism.
The book, however, describes a Teresa that not many expect to find. Most assume that she usually felt very close to God. However, she wrote for many years of her dark interior struggle. She laboured day-after-day to touch and improve the lives of children and the chronically poor as something that Jesus Christ called her to do. But at the same time, she did not feel his nearness. She desired a personal intimacy with God, but more often than not, felt his absence.
The Time article seeks to make sense of this. How could a person, so devoted to God and to others, feel so distant from him for so long?
One explanation considered in the article is that she was a deluded soul who was unwilling to admit that God doesn't exist. Clinging to the belief that he does helped Mother Teresa make sense of the world, giving her purpose.
Another way to understand Teresa's experience (that van Biema explores at greater length) is that she experienced in a more extreme way what many Christian believers, including the famous saints, often find. There are times of feeling very close to God. And there are times when the feelings are far different.
The spirituality that Jesus taught focused hardly at all on feelings. The factor that is most constant in his advice for living was understanding in what God called you to do and to simply follow that calling. And the focus on that calling was always a double focus: to honour God at all times and to express that honouring by helping others.
I think that that double calling is key for every person — to help others all through life as a way of living as the Creator made us to live.
There are some great ways for students to explore that calling. The chaplains' office will have opportunities for students to get involved in assisting others. There, the spiritual dimension, the God connection, will not be hidden. The FSU will have opportunities through the year for helping others where the spiritual aspect will not get attention, but where this may be part of any student's reality who participates.
Finally in the London community there are many churches, Catholic and Protestant that have programs for helping people in the region. Likely, Mother Teresa would recommend checking them out.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
