Help in Our Weakness
Pentecost 2003

Week of June 9, 2003

Lectionary Readings

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 104:24-35
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (1910–1997)—known to all the world as Mother Teresa—was born in Skopje, the capital city of modern day Macedonia, to Albanian parents who were deeply Catholic. As a little girl she felt a strong call of God upon her life to love Jesus, so it was no surprise when she joined the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Dublin, Ireland at the age of eighteen. About a year later, in 1929 Agnes was sent to Darjeeling, India, where she taught young girls. Eager to pursue her teaching career, Agnes, who by that time had completed her vows and taken the name Teresa after Saints Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) and Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897), was sent to Calcutta College for further studies. For the next fifteen years Teresa taught history and geography at Saint Mary’s High School.

In Calcutta Teresa experienced unimaginable poverty, and it was in that context that on September 10, 1946, at the age of thirty six, she took her famous train ride. Traveling from Calcutta to Darjeeling for a retreat, God spoke very directly to her. In her private correspondence Teresa later wrote that this experience was more than a strong sense of call or a burden; rather, Jesus spoke very directly to her in voices and visions: “Would you not help these poorest of the poor?” One year later, in August 1947, Teresa left the convent to live in the slums with the wretched poor and dying. She traded her traditional habit and instead donned the ordinary dress of an Indian woman, her now famous white sari with a blue stripe. She never owned any possessions and never asked for money.

Just to mention Mother Teresa’s name conjures up images of sainthood at its saintliness. When she died of heart failure on September 5, 1997, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,500 nuns in more than 100 countries. Her honors the world over are too numerous to mention, and include the Nobel Peace Prize (1979). At her burial on September 10, 1997, fifty one years to the day after that famous train ride, dignitaries from two dozen countries attended, but befitting her love of the poor, half of the seats in Netaji Stadium were reserved for those outcasts whom she served.

So what does this have to do with Pentecost? Everything, as it turns out.

In a fascinating article Carol Zaleski reviews some of the newly published letters that Mother Teresa wrote to her spiritual directors, and what we learn is that this remarkable saint experienced sustained periods of spiritual battle, what Christians across the centuries have described as “the dark night of the soul.” It is true that Jesus spoke in visions and voices to Mother Teresa on that famous train ride, but according to her own letters, soon after she started living and ministering in the slums, these visions ceased, “and she experienced a spiritual darkness that would remain with her until her death” fifty years later.¹

Fifty years of spiritual darkness for Mother Teresa?! Yes. Inward suffering, loss of consolation, doubt, loneliness, feelings of abandonment, what she herself described as “just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” The Spirit-filled life this side of Pentecost, if we are to trust the experience of Mother Teresa, is not, it turns out, a continual spiritual high of joy, victory and ecstasy, but instead a struggle to the end.

The lectionary reading this week from Romans 8:22–27 says as much. All creation, writes Paul, labors and toils under the strains of what he calls “sufferings, frustration, and bondage to decay.” In fact, writes Paul, “we ourselves” struggle likewise with inward groanings, pain and weakness. Here Paul sounds more like Mother Teresa than much of what we hear in the church where often we are lead to expect unattainable spiritual highs that soft pedal what Scripture and our greatest saints describe.

Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), a Spanish monk and mystic, wrote his famous Dark Night of the Soul while in prison because of his attempts to reform the church. In describing the work, Michael Gross suggests that “there has never been a better book for discouraged Christians. When you cannot understand what or why you believe, but find yourself unable to abandon faith, look to Saint John for help.”

Spiritual darkness and desolation, when prayer, Scripture, church and all forms of discipleship seem to count for nothing, were also the experience of Mother Teresa’s namesake, Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897). “Do not believe I am swimming in consolations,” she once wrote; “ oh, no, my consolation is to have none on earth.” Saint Therese died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four, and the last eighteen months of her life were a severe trial that she described as being trapped in a dark tunnel. Toward the end of her life she experienced what might only be described as satanic mockery: “You are dreaming about the light, about a fatherland embalmed in the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these marvels; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.”²

Mother Teresa of Calcutta died in the same month of September, 100 years after Therese of Lisieux. Like Saint John of the the Cross, and even Saint Paul in the book of Romans, they all remind us that spiritual darkness, desolation and struggle are by no means uncommon for even the most mature saints. They similarly remind us of faithfulness, fidelity, and perseverance. Thank God for Pentecost and Paul’s text this week, where we are reminded that life in the Spirit accounts for all our trials and struggles. Better yet, we can endure the desolation, no matter how long it lasts, not by stoic resignation but with the confidence that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. [Even though] we do not know how we ought to pray, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26).

¹ Carol Zaleski, “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa,” in First Things (May 2003), pp. 24–27. Mother Teresa’s letters were published by ZENIT News Agency as The Soul of Mother Teresa: Hidden Aspects of Her Interior Life, by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk.
² Quoted by Zaleski.