My journey...

Read This article about Mother Theresa and how she had 50 years of darkness in her life where she did not feel the presence of God. I have no doubt that God has been with her yet one cannot understand the desolation that we have to go through. The times of loneliness that God places in our lives. Yet in those times when God seems far away, deep within her she knows there is a God. Later she learned that our walk is not based on feelings alone. Yet every morning she still communes with Christ without fail. She wrote "Your happiness is all I want."

Yet many Christians still believe that as Christians, we should have no struggles and we should let the world know how wonderful it is to became a Christian without pain or struggle. Mother Theresa still kept to herself her struggles and was afraid to let anyone know of her struggles lest they have a wrong perception of Christ. She requested to destroy her letters that showed her weakness. Because as Christians we are told that as Christians we are Christ's ambassadors. When they see us, they see Christ. Mother Theresa wrote "when people see the letters, people will think more of me and less of Jesus." I admire her heart. That though she was in the desert place for so many years, her love for God remained strong. It did not deter her to give up. But is it the fault of the church that taught us as Christians, we are to hold our head high and walk through the storms? As though nothing has happened? We should never show weakness cause weakness is of the devil?


So much emphasis in our Christian walk is placed upon what we can do for Christ but not much about who we are in Him. Just that we are suppose to be overcomers. Suddenly when we accept Christ we becomes "Super humans." We never share about our struggles cause we think it shows weakness. People will think that we are not walking right with God.

Do not get me wrong. It is wonderful to be a Christian. I will never turn back. But I do have struggles. The pain is real. But I have Christ. Who walks with me. Though I do not feel Him most of the time, my faith allows me to believe He is there with me. We are still human in the flesh though we are redeemed. We read of bible heroes but which one does not have their own struggle? They are heroes cause they believed in God though they struggle. They held on to their faith and learn to trust God who is able. In our weakness we are made strong. David wrote "My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word." "My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life"

Yesterday, I was reminded that in our struggle we find Christ to be more real in our lives. Psalm 119:71 "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I may learn your decrees"

Below just some bits from the CNN time. You can find the whole write up here.

That absence (of feeling the presence of God) 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.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.) Yet Kolodiejchuk sees it in St. John's context, as darkness within faith. Teresa found ways, starting in the early 1960s, to live with it and abandoned neither her belief nor her work. Kolodiejchuk produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act.

It raises questions about God and faith, the engine behind great achievement, and the persistence of love, divine and human. That it does so not in any organized, intentional form but as a hodgepodge of desperate notes not intended for daylight should leave readers only more convinced that it is authentic — and that they are, somewhat shockingly, touching the true inner life of a modern saint.