What is lesser known about St Mother Teresa, is the intense inner suffering she struggled with for many years. She experienced the Dark Night of the Soul, where she did not feel any consolation or love of God within her, she often felt the absence of God. This intense suffering of hers was essential to her own mysticism of serving Jesus in the poor, and manifesting the love of God to others - even when she herself could not feel it.
As a nun and a saint, her strength always came from prayer and the Eucharist. All her nuns have adoration twice a day, so that all their missionary charitable work flows from Jesus and back to Jesus. By spending time in Adoration in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament this teaches them the eyes of faith, so that they can also learn to see Jesus in every person they serve. This contemplative understanding of serving and loving Jesus in others, was a unique aspect of Mother Teresa’s spirituality.
The Incarnational dimension of Mother Teresa’s spirituality, serving Jesus in the poorest of the poor, is founded upon the Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. God became man out of love for us, died on the cross for love of us - and remains in the Eucharist for love of us. This love of Jesus for us is not static or in the past, it is alive and dynamic. The love we receive from Jesus himself in the Eucharist is the same love we need to reflect and radiate to all around us, sharing with them the love that Jesus has for them.
This intense love of Jesus is emphasised in the chapels of the Order, where they have the words written on the wall “I thirst” next to the crucifix. Mother Teresa taught that Jesus’ thirst on the cross was not for water, but for souls. He was thirsting for you and me, to love him as he loves us, and to help satiate his thirst by bringing others to him in love.
Many of us would think that someone who so often preached the value of a smile, who spent years working with the poor, loving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and a woman of intense prayer would have been bursting with the love of God inside her. Yet she only experienced darkness within herself. She felt empty and life she was in hell, with no love.
Yet even with this suffering, she chose to remain faithful to the calling she felt God had given her. She still chose to get up and pray everyday, she chose to love God even when she felt she had no love, she chose to smile to others and help them feel loved - even when she didn’t feel she was. This intense suffering and desolation was part of her mysticism of suffering. She said that suffering itself was Jesus coming so close to you as to kiss you!
So many of us confuse love with a feeling or emotion. But in Catholic theology, love is an action of the will - we choose to will the good of another, this is what it means to love.
When someone is mean or rude to you, but you still treat them kindly - this is charity.
When someone doesn’t deserve your forgiveness, but you still choose to forgive them anyway - this is charity.
When someone lies about you or persecuted you, but you still don’t retaliate and even try to help them when they need help - this is charity.
When you feel dead on the inside and exist on darkness, but smile to all you meet and make them feel that they are precious - this is charity.
Charity is love, but not romantic or erotic love. It is self sacrificing love, agape. As Mother Teresa used to say, love until it hurts - then love some more. For love to be real, it must hurt, it has to be sacrificial and therefore it is heroic. Charity makes us share in the love of Christ himself on the cross for us and in the Eucharist for us, so that we can learn how to love more tenderly.
Only someone who truly loved Jesus could have done the things that Mother Teresa did for so many years. This was her mysticism of suffering - she was united to God precisely through the absence of feeling his love. But she still willed to love God anyway, she chose it.
This is something I have found to be true on my own life - love is a choice. We have to choose to follow God and be kind to others even when we don’t feel like it. We have to choose to remain faithful to the Gospel even when it hurts or we feel overcome by our own weakness and inadequateness. We have to choose to shine the light of Christ to others, even when we ourselves feel we are in darkness. We have to choose to pray, even when we feel it is empty or a waste of time.
Love is a choice, let us never forget this. Choose love today. Choose Jesus, because he has chosen you so that he can love others through you.
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