Yesterday, 'case you missed it, was the 10th anniversary of the death of Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Asia News has a heap of stories about celebrations in India (scroll to the bottom for more). The preacher for the papal household, the aptly named Fr. Cantalamessa, writes about Teresa's Dark Night experience (my link is to the official English version; some home-grown translations are floating around). He has some enlightening things to say for those of us interested in spiritual theology, including this observation about why Mother Teresa's dark night was so long: This is profoundly beautiful, too:The interminable night of some modern saints is the means of protection invented by God for today’s saints who live and work constantly under the spotlight of the media. It is the asbestos suit for the one who must walk amid the flames; it is the insulating material that impedes the escape of the electric current, causing short circuits.
St. Paul said: “And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7).
The thorn in the flesh that was God’s silence preserved Mother Teresa from any intoxication, amid all the world’s talk about her, even at the moment of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The interior pain that I feel,” she said, “is so great that I don’t feel anything from all the publicity and people’s talking.”
How wrong author and atheist Christopher Hitchens is when he writes “God is not great. Religion poisons everything,” and presents Mother Theresa as a product of the media-era.
But there is an even more profound reason that explains why these nights are prolonged for a whole lifetime: the imitation of Christ.Then, taking a page from Introduction to Christianity's thesis that the believer and the unbeliever are always united in doubt. Fr. contemplates the delicious idea that Mother Teresa is an ideal companion for the sincere atheist:This mystical experience is a participation in the dark night of the spirit that Jesus had in Gethsemane and in which he died on Calvary, crying: “My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?”
Mother Teresa was able to see her trial ever more clearly as an answer to her desire to share the sitio (thirst) of Jesus on the cross: “If my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation give you a drop of consolation, my own Jesus, do with me as you wish. ... Imprint on my soul and life the suffering of your heart. ... I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me. ... Please do not take the trouble to return soon. I am ready to wait for you for all eternity.”
It would be a serious error to think that the life of these persons was all gloom and suffering.
Deep down in their souls, these persons enjoy a peace and joy unknown by the rest of men, deriving from the certainty, stronger than doubt, of being in the will of God. St. Catherine of Genoa compares the suffering of souls in this state to that of purgatory and says that the latter “is so great, that it is only comparable to that of hell,” but that there is in them a “very great contentment” that can only be compared to that of the saints in paradise.
The joy and serenity that emanated from Mother Teresa’s face was not a mask, but the reflection of profound union with God in which her soul lived. It was she who “deceived” herself about her spiritual status, not the people.
The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully the situation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way, live in the dark night of the spirit.(Hey, Hitch! Teresa is your counterpart! Hehehe.) There's more that's very much worth your R'ingTWT.Albert Camus called them “the saints without God.” The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they “sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them” (see Luke 15:2).
This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of Foligno; T.S. Eliot on those of Julian of Norwich.
There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. Few know that Samuel Beckett, the author of Waiting for Godot, the most representative drama of the theater of the absurd, in his free time read St. John of the Cross.
Popery
All the addresses (and cool photos), including the Angelus, from the Pope's weekend trip to Loreto are available here. Here's one line from the homily we discussed previously that I hadn't noticed (my emphasis).
Go against the tide: do not listen to the interested and persuasive voices that today are peddling on many sides models of life marked by arrogance and violence, by oppression and success at any cost, by appearances and by having at the expense of being. How many messages, which reach you especially through the mass media, are targeting you! Be alert! Be critical! Do not follow the wave produced by this powerful, persuasive action. Do not be afraid, dear friends, to prefer the "alternative" routes pointed out by true love: a modest and sound lifestyle; sincere and pure emotional relationships; honest commitment in studies and work; deep concern for the common good. Do not be afraid of seeming different and being criticized for what might seem to be losing or out of fashion; your peers but adults too, especially those who seem more distant from the mindset and values of the Gospel, are crying out to see someone who dares to live according to the fullness of humanity revealed by Jesus Christ.Strangely, I saw no headlines reading: "Resist the media before it is too late says Pope!"
- His Holiness is Austria-bound tomorrow. Program here.
- B16 addressed these words to the International Commission of Catholic Pastoral Prison Care. I seem to be on the right track in insisting that Catholic opposition to the death penalty is cheap if it isn't accompanied by a prison reform movement:
By their very nature, therefore, these institutions must contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders, facilitating their transition from despair to hope and from unreliability to dependability. When conditions within jails and prisons are not conducive to the process of regaining a sense of a worth and accepting its related duties, these institutions fail to achieve one of their essential ends. Public authorities must be ever vigilant in this task, eschewing any means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners.
- Yesterday's Audience was a continuation of teaching on Gregory of Nyssa --with a little Mother Teresa thrown in. It's too long to cite (though short to read), but it's a particularly rich address. The translation doesn't include what must have been spontaneous remarks about Teresa. Asia News covers that:
“Dear friends, the life and witness of this true disciple of Christ, whose liturgical memory we celebrate today, are an invitation to you and the entire Church to always serve Christ in the poor and the needy. Keep following her example and always be the instrument of Divine Mercy,” Benedict XVI said as he greeted a large group of missionaries, both men and women, and their collaborators.
- The story also mentioned the Pope was hoarse.
Potpourri
- China: Fr. Z. notes the impact of the Olympics on Sino-Vatican relations. For an out-of-touch academic, the Pope knows when to press his advantage.
- Israel: Vatican-Israeli talks resume.
- Russia: Kyrill & Alexy II like the cut of B16's gib. Maybe that CDF definition of the Church had them as the intended audience? The latest relations sound positively warm.
- Turkey: Patriarch Bartholomew I is optimistic about religious freedom under the new government. Also announces a big conference on the environment in Greenland.
- U.S. Mother Dolores Hart, the starlet who became a contemplative nun, grants an interview. The occasion is the publication of her book on her Abbey's foundress. There's an interesting connection between Regina Laudia Abbey & Gen. Patton:
General George Patton, Sr., liberated France as the commanding general of the Third Army. His was the army that liberated Jouarre, the abbey where Mother Benedict was in hiding.
Years later his granddaughter, the daughter of General George Patton, Jr., Mother Margaret Georgina Patton, found her way to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, and that began the conscious connection between the liberator and Mother Benedict.
This connection continues through the whole Patton family to this day.
Photo credit: AP/ Bebeto Matthews
