This is so heavy. How can a person do so much yet be so empty — admittedly having lived a false life? Mother Teresa wasn’t a saint:
“The smile,” she writes, is “a mask” or “a cloak that covers everything.” Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. “I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love,” she remarks to an adviser. “If you were [there], you would have said, ‘What hypocrisy.’
I remember reading this article in Time magazine, print edition, when it came out in 2007, which includes the above quote [entire article is here]:
Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith
Her secret letters show that she spent almost 50 years without sensing the presence of God in her life. …
A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist.”
That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the “dryness,” “darkness,” “loneliness” and “torture” she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. “The smile,” she writes, is “a mask” or “a cloak that covers everything.” Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. “I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love,” she remarks to an adviser. “If you were [there], you would have said, ‘What hypocrisy.’
Ughhh — did she then not really mean this? Was she just saying what she was supposed to say, or was she sincere?:
Mother Teresa wasn’t ‘feeling’ Christ’s love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, ‘Your happiness is all I want.’
Her lack of joy is tragic, because Jesus wants to fill us with His joy, which is automatic when we are truly abiding in Him and truly producing fruit. Jesus in John 15:1-12:
Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you. “In this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples. Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and remain in his love. I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.
It’s tragic that many have done things for God without actually being in God. We can’t just say “Lord, Lord.” Jesus must be Lord of our lives. We must abide in Him. Jesus in Matthew 7:21-23:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’
Did Teresa’s false Catholic doctrines destroy her faith? The following quotes are from Mother Teresa wasted her life serving a false religion.
The Catholic church continues the old covenant priesthood; even though, Jesus did away with priests when He died on the cross and the veil was rent! Now, we can have direct access to the Father through Christ, our Priest. Teresa believed she needed the Priests to be able to access Christ:
When the priest is there, then can we have our altar and our tabernacle and our Jesus. Only the priest put Jesus there for us. … Jesus wants to go there, but we cannot bring him unless you first give him to us. This is why I love priests so much. We could never be what we are and do the things we do without you priests who first bring Jesus to us.
(Mother Teresa speech at the Worldwide retreat for Priests – Oct 1984)
Teresa relied upon Mary (a person like you and me) to connect her with Jesus:
Mother Teresa was a Catholic through and through. She worshipped Mary as the mother of God and co-redeemer with Christ.
Mary … is our patroness and our Mother, and she is always leading us to Jesus.”
(Mother Teresa speech at the Worldwide retreat for Priests – Oct 1984)
Jesus always did the things that pleased His Father, drawing people to His Father, not Muhammed, and not the false Hindu gods. And He did away with the Priesthood. Teresa helped people serve whomever:
I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic”
(Mother Teresa — A Simple Pathp 31)
This should break our hearts that someone did so much “for Jesus” without really knowing Jesus — admitting she faked her smile, and spoke as though her heart was really in love with Jesus. It’s too bad she wasn’t open with the public about her dilemma so she could have been cured, instead of relying on the Catholic leaders, who apparently kept her in the false religious system which really isn’t life in the Son.
May we learn from her example and press into our high callings in Christ Jesus to live Jesus’ narrow way — life in the Son — where fruit remains and our joy will be full — always doing what pleases Him!
All of us can be real, overcoming, going-to-heaven Christians! When we do right we’ll feel right:
Leonard Ravenhill: Romans 7 vs 8 — Life before the Son vs Life in the Son — “Romans 7 is a funeral march, Romans 8 is a wedding march … it’s a Spirit dominated life in chapter 8.”
Who-Goes-To-Heaven Scriptures — Narrow is the Way | Who are the Children of God? — “There is therefore now *no condemnation* to those who are IN CHRIST Jesus, who don’t WALK according to the flesh, but ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.”
God’s guarantee for the truly humble in James 4:6b-8:
“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Be subject therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
We must live in reality. This life is our only chance to get it right.
God loves us so much and wants us to be free!
Related:
Dan Corner has some additional quotes here
All of my The Catholic Deception posts (10 posts per page, latest appear first)
Is It Right: To Judge, To Expose Error & To Name Names? — Those who are faithful in exposing error according to the Bible are now being widely denounced, and are accused of being unloving and unkind
