The Dark Night of the Soul

Dear Friends:

I read a very interesting article on Mother Teresa taken from Time Magazine, Sept. 3:2007. In is described the deep inner struggle that she went through all the years of her ministry to the poor of India. Those who wrote the article were trying to understand with the natural mind a spiritual reality.

In 1951, according to the article, taken from the recently published work on her previously unpublished letters, quoted one of the letters to a confessor saying, "I want to ... drink only from His chalice of pain." All of her life needs to be seen as God answering that prayer.

A dear friend of mine for many years, met her one time in India. His statement was that, from his discernment she was clearly a saved woman. She knew God in a dimension that very few did. Like many of us, she went through her doubts, fears, and struggles concerning God. Because she was honest about her inner life, the some who comment in the article try to say there is no God and that people who try to explain away her comments are deluded. That argument, in many senses, does not deserve an answer. Just as we, who believe go through times of doubts concerning the things of God, so the doubters, agnostics atheists go through their times. Do their times of doubt prove God? We could go around that mountain a number of times.

The reality is that many go through this struggle. Although God placed the hole in us that can oly be filled by a relationship with Himself it is the struggle from the inside that causes growth. This is the way in all plants, animals, and human relationships. No child or plant can be caused to grow by externals. They may be situlated by them, but it will not grow them. All growth comes from something happening inside.

In the natural world we all understand the 4 seasons in some senses. Spiritually we go through the same type of thing. The problem being that it is not recognized in our spiritual lives and it also does not necessarily follow the "calendar year". The season principles do apply though, and growth does not occur unless we go through their spiritual parallels.

There could be extensive teaching on that, but, I also would like to comment, further on the main point of this. There is a sense in which, according to Ecc. 3:11, that the world is in our hearts. Taking the simplicity of that statement, there are many different climate zones in the natural world. Depending on where you live, depends on the severity and length of the seasons.

There is a place or two on the globe where it is only milder, but never above freezing and very few live there. It is a life of hardship and continual difficulty, it would almost seem that, internally, that is where Mother Teresa lived.

Just those two thoughts give pause for reflection and meditation, so I will leave you to it.

Dr. Bill