I thought this was an interesting article that showed even the most "saintly" people struggle with their belief in God.
I've always respected this woman and the work that she did. Some interesting stats: The Missionaries of Charity, which she started, feeds 500,000 families a year in Calcutta alone, treats 90,000 leprosy patients annually and educates 20,000 children every year.
Associated Press:
WRITINGS SHOW FAITH, DOUBT OF MOTHER TERESA
"Mother Teresa sometimes felt rejected by God, helpless and tempted to abandon her work caring for the poor and dying, according to her letters and diairies published by an Indian theological journal.
The documents describe a lifelong spiritual struggle that ranges from joy and yearning for God to doubts of his existence. They were collected by Roman Catholic priests and nuns preparing a report for Pope John Paul II, who is considering her possible beatification, a step toward canonizing her as a saint.
Excerpts of writings from before she founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1946 to just before her death in 1997 appeared in the March issue of Vidyajyoti (Light of Knowledge), a journal published in New Delhi by the Jesuit order.
Describing tears of loneliness and the pain of feeling abandoned, Mother Teresa never stopped writing of her longing for God and her desire to be used completely by him. She also never stopped working, expanding her order to more than 100 countries and winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
"She confesses frequently that in her darkness she was unable to pray, yet she encouraged her nuns to pray through personal union with Jesus," said the Rev. Joseph Neuner, a senior theologian who wrote the article and was a friend of Mother Teresa.
"This cleaving to each other, Jesus and I, is prayer," Mother Teresa wrote in 1966. As she walked about the slums of Calcutta, she constantly told God how much she longed for him.
"Some experience of darkness is part of every spiritual life," Neuner said. Even so, "it may be difficult to find a parallel to the lifelong night which enwrapped Teresa."
"It came to her at a time when she embarked on her new life in the service of the abandoned," Neuner said. "From the beginning, she had to experience not only their material poverty and helplessness, but also their abandonment."
She was tempted to return to Europe, writing of "all the beautiful things and comforts, the people they mix with, in a word everything."
She resisted, though, "Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your holy will in my regard," she wrote in 1949.
Some of the most agonzied writings come from 1959 and 1960, when the Rev. T. Picachy, future archbishop of Calcutta, was her spiritual confessor and had asked her to write out her thoughts.
"Now, Jesus, I go the wrong way," she wrote. "They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of loss of God. In my soul, I feel just the terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing."
"Jesus, please forgive the blasphemy -- I have been told to write everything--that darkness that surrounds me on all sides. I can't life my soul to God: No light, no inspiration enters my soul," she wrote.
Neuner said Mother Teresa's understanding of her own spiritual journey led to joy, though not the end of darkness, as she realized that suffering brough her closer to Jesus
"Hope is a good thing... maybe the best of things."
Andy's letter to Red in the Shawshank Redemption