Encountering Mother Teresa. Linda Schaefer
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Название: Encountering Mother Teresa
Автор: Linda Schaefer
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Словари
isbn: 9781681923796
isbn:
Father James went on: “There is a second dark night that Saint John of the Cross describes. Besides the dark night of the senses, there is even a darker night: that of the spirit, where you do not even have the spiritual experience of God’s presence. You have the experience of God’s absence.” I asked Father James if this darkness is the same darkness most people in the world experience. “That is why Mother Teresa has become a beacon of light for the world in its darkness. There is a secular darkness where the world has forgotten about God, and the world tries to operate as though its creator was not important. Mother Teresa talked about that to the world in her Nobel Peace Prize speech. Everywhere she went, she testified that God is alive and active in the world. However, her experience of God is absent. … She is thirsting for a communion with this God who has called her to be his beloved. She never doubted that God existed.”
Father James told me that once Mother Teresa pulled him aside and provided him “the only glimpse I had of her dark night. She took my hand in her hand and said, ‘Repeat after me: I will, I wish, with God’s blessing to be holy.’ She then wrote down the words on a piece of paper and numbered each line to go with each finger.” Father James sensed at that moment that she had a deep desire to be connected to God. That meeting came a few years before she died. “Then she took my other hand and said, ‘But that is not enough; repeat after me.’” Father James repeated on each finger, “You did it to me.” “We have to match that willingness with concrete actions. She then said, ‘Easy to say, harder to do.’ She said, ‘Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty, you gave me drink; I was naked, you clothed me; I was homeless, you sheltered me; I was sick or in prison, you visited me. When? When you did it to the poorest of the poor.’ Then she took my two hands folded in prayer and clasped them between hers and said, ‘Put together, you will be holy.’”
Home for the Dying in Kalighat with the iconic statue of the crucified Jesus and the hand-painted words “I thirst.” Mother Teresa founded the home in 1952, next to a Hindu temple. She called it Nirmal Hriday (“the Home of the Pure Heart”). Renovations to the home began in 2013, and today this crucifix has been replaced with statues encased in glass.
“I want to love Him as He has not been loved.”
Father James told me her formula with this gesture was to bring the intention and prayers together with the actions of the works of charity. The prayer could be said on ten fingers:
1. I will
2. I wish
3. With God’s blessing
4. To be
5. Holy
6. You
7. Did
8. It
9. To
10. Me
When the two hands are clasped, the intention and the actions are joined together.
During my conversation with Father James, I read an excerpt from one of Mother Teresa’s letters that had not been published yet. She wrote, “Only blind faith carries me … the more I want Him, the less I am wanted … I want to love Him as He has not been loved … yet there is that terrible feeling of the absence of God.” I asked Father James if Mother Teresa’s experience could be compared to that of Saint John of the Cross. “It might be easier to compare her experience of the dark night with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She was Mother Teresa’s patron saint. She had a great love for the way of spiritual childhood. Saint John of the Cross is the spiritual master in our understanding of this phenomenon of the dark night.” Father James referred to other saints who wrote about the experience. He also reminded me that anyone who takes his or her prayer life seriously will also enter the desert. “Mother Teresa shows us not to be afraid to enter the desert.”
Mother Teresa found that commitment to faith was particularly important to the sick people she served as they neared their final days. “Mother Teresa in ministering to the dying in Calcutta and anywhere in the world helped the sick and the dying discover their deep longing for God, but at the same time she saw in their sickness what she was experiencing herself.” She helped them on their journey through the “dark desert,” showing them that the God who seemed absent was really present. “But you don’t connect to God through feeling but through being willing.”
“Her joy was a deeper satisfaction in knowing her will was in tune with the divine will; that her heart was placed close to Jesus’ heart.” The friendship between Mother Teresa and Father James began in 1982, and he gave retreats for her sisters over the next fifteen years. PHOTO COURTESY OF FATHER JAMES MCGJRRY
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