Positivity: Mother Teresa’s letters show heroic spiritual struggle

From Catholic World News in Rome:

The spiritual struggles of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, powerfully conveyed in a forthcoming book, are not evidence of any lack of faith, but an indication of her heroic struggle, a prominent Vatican cardinal has argued.

Cardinal Julian Herranz, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (the Vatican’s top canon-law body), told the Italian daily La Repubblica that Mother Teresa clearly suffered through the “dark night of the soul,” like many other great saints.

The book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light includes letters that Mother Teresa sent to her confessors and spiritual directors over a period of years, recounting her internal struggles and her sense of aridity in prayer.

The frank content of the letters– describing the spiritual struggles of a woman who is revered worldwide as a saint– has prompted some secular media outlets to question whether Mother Teresa had lost her faith in God. But any such interpretation of the work is profoundly mistaken, Church leaders agree.

Cardinal Herranz noted that leading mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about the “dark night of the soul.” Their spiritual trials reflect the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said. They should be recognized, the Spanish cardinal added, as “a test of greatness of faith.”

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former director of the Vatican press office, made a similar point in La Repubblica. Navarro-Valls observed that the anxieties expressed by Mother Teresa should be seen as “not a sign of lack of faith; they are normal, and in her case heroic.”

The contents of the new book will not come as a surprise to Vatican officials who are studying the cause for canonization of Mother Teresa. Her correspondence was included in the file studied by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints prior to her beatification in 2003.