Mother Theresa

It appears that Mother Theresa of Calcutta was not a “flat character” in the annals of the saints of the Catholic Church. Time Magazine has a major article describing the contents of a new book containing excerpts from her diaries and correspondence over the long period of her adult life, especially from the time of her transition from the community of teaching sisters in which she began her vocation through the period of her ministry as founder of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.
She documents a lifelong spiritual struggle, much of which takes the form of a “dark night of the soul” where despite an intense desire for intimacy with Jesus who called her forward, she often found silence, emptiness, and abandonment. Certainly this does not make her less, but ranks her among the great spiritual figures of Christianity. Based on the account here, the collection of writings appears to be a truly remarkable document. A spiritual guide, in the truest sense, is not the cocksure figure waving a baton at the head of a parade down Main Street, but rather one who dares to navigate the lonely alleys and deep shadows, drawing forward the lost, the hurt, the angry, the doubting.