Reading Mother Teresa--Deception

May these words of my mouth 

and this meditation of my heart 

be pleasing in your sight, 

Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Psalm 19:14

I’ve often wondered why Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is as revered as it is, presumed by some to be the best American novel of the 19th century. For years, I used it in an intro class in American literature, and only rarely did it rouse students from mid-morning yawns.

Most don’t really get it, don’t understand why the preacher, Arthur Dimmesdale, for instance, would conceal his passion for Hester Prynne, lie about it in fact, and not claim his very own daughter, little Pearl. Love conquers all, right?

The implicit values of the novel simply don’t jive with life today – a mid-19th century novel about mid-17th century Puritan New England. Besides, who really cares? What’s more, the novel’s complexity – Dimmesdale’s complexity, Hester’s complexity too – is its strength and genius. Readers who aren’t interested in complexity find The Scarlet Letter an Everest simply not worth the fancy hiking shoes.

But it’s Arthur Dimmesdale I think of when I read the letters, the confessions of a faithless Mother Teresa, Arthur Dimmesdale, whose own sermons had to taste like acid when he considered the deceitful fiction of his own life. Revered by his congregation and the entire community, he was, even as he accepted their praise, the most reverend of liars.

There’s no scandal in Mother Teresa’s life, at least none that anyone has ever uncovered. There’s no illicit relationship, no graft or corruption, no crime, no drawer full of unmarked bills. What there is, however, is severe, sustained doubt, ten years’ worth, darkness created by her perceived spiritual abandonment, by a God who was, for her at least, gone.

And in that time, not unlike Arthur Dimmesdale, Mother Teresa found herself in a position which that required her to be a spiritual guide for many, in her case the leader of a dynamic, new sisterhood, the Missionaries of Charity, dedicated young women driven by the same passion Mother Teresa had used to inaugurate her ministry on the streets of Calcutta. Their leader, rapidly becoming a celebrity, found herself totally shut out from the eternal love of God – “. . . words pass through my [lips] and I long with a deep longing to believe in them,” she once wrote (193).

I can’t imagine the pain of having to say pious things, to bring consolation and strength, when she herself could find no similar path to oneness with God.

The whole time smiling. – Sisters & people pass such remarks. – They think my faith, trust & love are filling my very being & that the intimacy with God and union to His will must be absorbing my heart. – Could they but know – and how my cheerfulness is the cloak by which I cover the emptiness & misery. (187)

Remarkably, and in a fashion that can only be characterized by one word – saintliness – she never seemingly doubted the love of God, even though she was convinced for years that she could not be a recipient of his favor.

“In my heart there is no faith – no love – no trust – there is so much pain – the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted,” she wrote to Jesus, a kind of assignment given her by Father Picachy. “I utter words of community prayers – and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give. – But my prayer of union is not there any longer. – I no longer pray.” And yet, she wouldn’t give up: “My soul is not one with You – and yet when alone in the streets – I talk to You for hours – of my longing for You” (193).

Unlike Arthur Dimmesdale, who is only a fiction, in every way, Mother Teresa, who is and was very real, is a testimony: by the gift of everything she had and was to those who lived “in the dark holes” of Calcutta’s mean and dirty streets, to the pitiful darkness she suffered throughout those very times in her life when she was most revered, Mother Teresa is, in every human way, a model of abiding faith. She is a saint, even when she was convinced, absolutely, that she wasn’t. Remarkable.

Doubt – severe, blanketing doubt – does not have to keep you or me or anyone we love from the throne of God. Mother Teresa was there, even when she didn’t believe she was or ever could be.

Praise his holy name.