Vatican City, Jun 7, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- There are many things about Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta that could be called heroic – her tireless service to the world’s most rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live the Gospel, just to name a couple.
But the priest who oversaw her path to sainthood said that for him, one thing stands out above all the rest: her experience of spiritual darkness and what she described as feeling totally abandoned by God for the majority of her life.
“The single most heroic thing is exactly her darkness. That pure living, that pure, naked faith,” Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator for Mother Teresa’s canonization cause, told CNA in an interview. Fr. Kolodiejchuk is a priest of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, founded by Mother Teresa in 1989.
By undergoing the depth and duration of the desolation she experienced and doing everything that she did for others in spite of it, “that’s really very heroic,” he said.
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910 in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Sisters of Loretto at the age of 17, but later left after she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and to live among the poor.
She went on to found several communities of both active and contemplative Missionaries of Charity, which include religious sisters, brothers, and priests.
The first community of active sisters was founded in 1950. An order of active brothers was founded nearly 20 years later in 1968. Then two contemplative orders came, one of women (in 1976) and one of men (in 1979).
In 1989 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers was established, and is a clerical religious institute of diocesan right whose members make promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.
Additionally, an order of lay missionaries was also founded in 1984, and several movements who organize various works of charity have also been born as part of the Missionaries of Charity spiritual family.
One of the first steps in declaring someone a saint is to determine their heroic virtue. Fr. Kolodiejchuk said that Mother Teresa’s entire life was lived heroically, which was clear from what he had seen firsthand and heard from the testimonies of others, even though he himself has only been a part of the Missionaries of Charity family for 20 years.
He said the most heroic aspect of Mother Teresa’s life and vocation is the more than 50 years of darkness and abandonment she felt after receiving what she termed “a call within a call” to leave the Sisters of Loretto and found the Missionaries of Charity.
Although the Albanian nun is always seen beaming and smiling brightly in photos, she experienced a profound internal desolation during which she felt silence and rejection from God, who seemed distant.
In a letter to her spiritual director in 1957, Mother Teresa wrote that “I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer. Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.”
“Love – the word – it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul,” she said.
Mother Teresa had prayed fervently to share in Jesus’ suffering, and many, including her spiritual director, believed her feelings of rejection and abandonment to be a mirror of Christ’s own experience of loneliness and desolation during his Passion and death.
Because of the depth and duration of Mother Teresa’s spiritual desert, many have hailed her as a great mystic when it comes to topic of spiritual darkness.
Fr. Kolodiejchuk himself said Mother Teresa was “a great mystic, but also very concrete, very down to earth.”
The priest had met Mother Teresa in his early 20s while attending the vows of his sister, who had joined the active branch of the Missionaries of Charity sisters. He joined the order of priests a year later.
A lot of people “think that saints are somewhere in the mystical clouds,” he said, but cautioned that this wasn’t true of Mother Teresa, who was spiritual, but also observant and active in the lives of others.
From the first moment he met her, of Mother Teresa’s most distinguishing qualities was “this sense that she really was Mother,” he said, explaining that being a mother was something important to her, and was the only thing she was ever called.
When Mother Teresa was first elected superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, her immediate response after receiving congratulations, he noted, was to say “Oh that means nothing, the title. No, I want to be a mother.”
The nun also placed a heavy emphasis on God’s tenderness, Fr. Kolodiejchuk said, recalling that “tender” was one of her favorite words – even more so than mercy.
“She would talk more about Jesus’ tender love and mercy; his thoughtfulness, his presence, his compassion…So mercy was a word in her vocabulary, but with this quality especially of tenderness.”
“Even in the darkness she still had an intimate sense of God’s tender love for us,” he said, and recited a prayer that Mother Teresa would often teach and have others repeat: “Jesus in my heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I love you.”
The priest said that her canonization during the Jubilee of Mercy was providential since the core mission of the Missionaries of Charity is to respond to Chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, which lists the works of mercy.
He noted how the day of Mother Teresa’s canonization also marked a special jubilee day for workers and volunteers of mercy.
Given the work the Missionaries of Charity do, “it’s appropriate” that the nun would become a patroness for all who carry out the same type of activities, he said.
Part of the reason Mother Teresa is such a strong example for the world today, Fr. Kolodiejchuk believes, is because “people like to see,” and the work the Missionaries do is something visible that others can easily touch and participate in, no matter what religion they profess.
“Mother was a great believer in that we receive in giving. So there’s something attractive about the work. And then you receive by sharing in it,” he said.
This article was originally published on CNA April 4, 2016.
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The Catechism of the Council of Trent remained unchanged for centuries.
This one? Ha.
The late Cardinal Avery Dulles warned that if the Church changed it’s 2000 year old teaching on the moral permissibility of the death penalty, it would open the door to changing other doctrines previously considered unchangeable as well (abortion, euthanasia, contraception, the inviolability of marriage, a male only clergy, Papal Infallibility). This change is dangerous, poorly thought out and could potentially spell disaster for the Church.
On a possible shortened path to personal conversion, Samuel Johnson offered this earlier prudential judgment: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” (The Life of Samuel Johnson). One might be reminded, here, of St. Therese of Lisieux who discovered her vocation in the Church by praying for a sentenced convict who then converted seconds before his execution by the guillotine.
And then there’s John Goeghan, notorious child-rapist priest, who was not executed by the court but still was hanged—in his cell by another convict during the first year of his 10-year sentence. In an imperfect world even a merciful prison term can turn into a de facto death sentence.
So, do conundrums remain?—How do we now protect the dignity of, say, a prison guard’s life against fatal assault be convicts who are already serving life sentences, now with no further deterrent penalties?
Asked about the restrictive wording regarding capital punishment in the earlier Catechism (1994), the then Cardinal Ratzinger responded: “Clearly the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles…but has simply deepened (their) application…in the context of present-day historical circumstances” (National Review, July 10, 1995, p. 14; First Things, Oct. 1995, 83). And, in a July 2004 letter to (former!) Cardinal McCarrick, he wrote: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia….There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” As an aside, my memory is that the larger correspondence was widely circulated among bishops in America, but with this cover letter detached.
Concurring with the recent announcement by the Vatican, the late Jesuit Cardinal Avery Dulles clearly opposed the death penalty, but he also concluded that traditional teachings on “retributive justice” and “vindication of the moral order” (not to be conflated with vengeance, and mentioned elsewhere in the Catechism) were not reversed by (now St.) Pope John Paul II’s strong “prudential judgment” regarding the actual use of capital punishment. He noted that the pope simply remained silent on these other teachings. (“Seven Reasons America Shouldn’t Execute”, National Catholic Register, 3-24-02). As commentaries proliferate on the solidified Vatican position from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Dulles’ essay would be a good read. (The problem of false convictions would seem less an issue, given the extensive use now of nearly infallible DNA evidence.)
We knew this was coming.
“Inadmissible”
Pope Francis’s yet another end-run around doctrine?
Twenty centuries where the Church did not have the truth about the “inviolability and dignity” of the person but She is enlightened now???
But not “intrinsically evil”…
Yeah, I don’t think a new teaching can be snuck into the Catechism like that, with no reference to any authoritative document, especially since it contradicts all prior magisterial teaching. This is pretty clear evidence that Bergoglio is an antipope and that Benedict XVI is still the reigning Pontiff.
The Charles Manson’s of our age are fed and housed for $70,000 per annum. Could those funds be better utilized? Not being keen on the chair, the noose or the firing squad myself, I nevertheless characterize this last “word of wisdom” from the Domus Sanctae Marthae as ninety-nine percent of the rest of the noise from there – merely more left-wing knee jerk Jesuit balderdash. Yes the broken clock is right twice a day but this isn’t one of those times.
Credence squandered is not easily regained, and rest assured squandered it be. Start cleaning house – beginning at the very tippy-top so we can get on with business. No other topic is so pressing as that right now. It’s called proper prioritization.
Get it? Get with it. Putting it off to the next millennium (or the next pontificate — whatever comes first) won’t due.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. Either way I can live with it. What is of deep concern is change to dogma. “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent” (John Paul II Evangelium vitae 56.69 Cf Gen 4:10). The issue with John Paul II and the death penalty is that he was against it. John Paul II made it virtually impossible to exercise the death penalty in Evangelium by contrasting “absolute necessity” with “practically nonexistent”. Either something exists or it doesn’t. “Practical nonexistence is measured v Nonexistent which is an oxymoron. If we can’t practice it then what is it? However this apparent contradiction is conditional by saying “if not”, which leaves the slimmest of possibles open. So the Pontiff virtually changed the doctrine without changing it. The difference with Pope Francis’ revision of the Catechism is that it changes a dogma. My concern then is this highly contested doctrine is a testing ground for change of other more essential doctrine if the Pope’s argument that “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” This is a rationale that differs from “absolutely necessary” effectively saying the traditional doctrine was wrong placing dogma within the purview of cultural change.
“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
The wilful killing of a human being which attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person is called a murder. So, if Pope Francis is correct, the Church for the past 2,000 years, and the tradition of revelation from the time of Noah through Moses and beyond, has condoned a sin which cries to heaven for vengeance.
You’re as sick as Francis. Read the book of Numbers.
Perhaps some of the cardinals could submit a dubia, pointing out that this new statement is contradicting all of Church history. I’m sure the Pope would answer that, right?
If I sound bitter, it is because I am. It would certainly be nice to be living in a time when one could feel confident that the Pope was not actually trying to destroy the Church.
The Holy Spirit is strong in the Holy Father. God bless our leader and his flock.
Would the Holy Spirit deliberately confuse and muddle the faithful; going so far as to refuse to clarify Church teachings?!?
I think you made a typo in your name. It’s spelled “gullible,” not “gibbon.”
The Pontiff is doing yeoman’s work in dispelling the old myth that all Jesuits are intellectuals. That’s a fact lost on his sycophants.
I see this as within the realm of “development” rather than “change”. The Church always strives to go deeper into the mind of Christ and to bring Christ forth in time until time will be no more. If we ask if Christ would give the death sentence or if He would inject the poison, pull the trigger, turn on the electricity what would our answer *have to be* if we put ourselves in the place of Christ??? The question of the death penalty is not addressing the immediate defense of the life of the “innocent” (ie you shoot at one who is shooting at you, etc) but looking at the simple fact that the one who did do the crime is no danger to anyone once they are incarcerated correctly/securely (though we understand some do manage—always have/always will—to find ways to do more harm). Many will repent and finish out their sentences and even be in Heaven before some of us who think we’re not so bad? The Church exists to teach Christ and I do believe She’s doing that. We align ourselves with Christ and His holy Church; Christ does not align with our opinions. It will take prayer and striving to do His holy will perhaps for us to fully understand and embrace this.
“I see this as within the realm of “development” rather than “change”. The Church always strives to go deeper into the mind of Christ and to bring Christ forth in time until time will be no more. If we ask if Christ would give the death sentence or if He would inject the poison, pull the trigger, turn on the electricity what would our answer *have to be* if we put ourselves in the place of Christ???”
Developments do not flatly contradict what came before; change does.
We don’t have to ask whether Christ would give the death sentence. Have you never read the Bible? Like the story of Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5? Not to mention, for example, the deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt at the time of the Passover. Or do you think God the Father cruelly did something that was wrong, while Jesus said, “Oh, gosh, Dad, I really don’t think we should do that, because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person?”
But what about infallibility in Faith and Morals?
If this ‘teaching’ is only being fulfilled, where was the Church up to this time in not knowing the truth about the full dignity of the person?
While I am generally against the death penalty, my initial reaction is that this pronouncement of the pope is not only wacko and non-official, but also so very dangerously confusing to all the people of the world.
It’s not the place of bishops to decide about the particular conditions for using the death penalty, and they should limit their statements to general principles regarding just punishment and fairness to all.
In general, it seems that so much damage has been done by bishops inserting their personal opinions as settled doctrine. This confusion has caused people to generally take the teachings of the Catholic Church as a matter of individual preference, with the result of so many lives devastated by promiscuity and perversion and birth control and abortion — and ultimately the tragic breakdown of the family and the aching loneliness of western society.
Our bishops and priests in America — perhaps the majority — seem to have lost their nerve in defending the moral teachings of Jesus as truly helpful for us in this life, as well as preparing us for eternal happiness in the next life. The ways of Jesus are the ways of true love. The ways of the secular world are selfishness and lies disguised as love.
So it is that some bishops defend the lives of guilty murderers to a fault with loud and showy proclamations, while neglecting the lives of innocent victims unto death by the faintness of their protests. These bishops seem so eager to be trendy and popular in the ways of the world, and so ashamed of Jesus as found in the Catholic Church which is his gift to us.
Yes, it is true that the most vile criminal retains his dignity as a human always. He may have acted as an animal, or worse, but no person ever should be considered an animal. Let us hope and pray for all persons to be saved no matter how horrible their sins, in the spirit of the divine mercy of Jesus.
This doesn’t mean that the death penalty is never to be allowed. I’d sincerely prefer it to not be applied again, but wonder if it may be valid for those criminals who persist in preying on other prisoners with physical and sexual assaults, or who continue to commit serious crimes in society through lackeys.
Also, the governments of different countries should have discretion to assess their own national situations in reference to the application of the death penalty.
If our bishops really want a voice in the wider society, they will know their God-given place in presenting transcendent principles and not personal opinions. Instead of telling politicians how to do their jobs, our bishops should be considering how well they are fulfilling their own roles as representatives of the Good Shepherd — for so very many are being ravaged by wolves for lack of strong teaching and stout encouragement.
The resulting casualties are breathtaking in their statistical numbers, and heartbreaking to behold in each particular personal sadness. The secular world is darkness and death and despair; it is Jesus alone who is light and life and love.