To many Christians, she is taken into account a living saint, whose work with India’s poor demonstrated a life dedicated to Christ’s teachings. But, a latest study from the University of Birmingham has explored the doubts and struggles Mother Teresa battled throughout her ministry and life, revealing a human side that many believers will give you the option to discover with.
The research, published in Critical Research on Religion, delves into the ‘the dark night of the soul’ that was revealed within the book Come Be My Light, an edited collection of her personal writings from 1929 to 1994 that was published 10 years after her death. At the time of its publication, the book caused surprise amongst each her supporters and detractors with its revelations that she experienced deep loneliness and struggled to search out God in a world of pain and suffering.
“In Roman Catholic spiritual theology, the concept of ‘the dark night of the soul’ refers to a period of utmost spiritual agony that eventually leads to an entire mystical union with God,” Dr Gëzim Alpion, Associate Professor of Sociology on the University of Birmingham and writer of the study, said.
“Mother Teresa was at all times a controversial figure, but after Come Be My Light was published, this perception increased significantly, chiefly because it revealed a lifelong struggle along with her faith, which disrupted the image many had of her – a devout and unwavering servant of God.”
Dr Alpion. who has been researching Mother Teresa’s complex personality for over twenty years, used each a biographical and a latest sociological approach to look at the impact that this prolonged crisis of religion had on the work that Mother Teresa did within the slums of Kolkata among the many poor and suffering.
The study argues that her desire to search out God drove her to enlist quite a few helpers including the poor, former pupils, nuns and volunteers. Teresa also struggled with feelings of guilt round her motivations for her ministry, admitting that her work with the poor was primarily ‘for the sake of her soul’, and revealing her discomfort with the concept that she was ‘deceiving’ those working for and trusting her.
“Teresa’s struggles along with her faith became her principal motivator for her work, and this continued as she got older. We can see this clearly in 1953 when her ‘darkness’ had turn into so ‘terrible’ that she wrote that she felt ‘as if every thing’ inside her was ‘dead’,” Dr Alpion said.
“From then onwards, her decisions to expand her work across India within the Nineteen Fifties and overseas from the Sixties were geared towards easing this pain.”
These revelations about her ongoing struggles have raised questions on her mental health, with scholars split on the subject of diagnosing her with depression.
“Her defenders resist the concept that her struggles along with her faith were symptomatic of depression, whereas a number of admit that her writings display signifiers of a depressed person. This reluctance to acknowledge the link between the dark night and depression points to the bias and the stigma surrounding mental health throughout the Catholic and Christian communities,” said Dr Alpion.
By the tip of the Nineteen Fifties, Teresa was seemingly resigned to living with this burden, writing in 1962, at the height of her spiritual crisis, that were she to turn into a saint it could be considered one of ‘darkness’. Hoping it could at the least lessen in its intensity, she became more reticent in sharing about it from the Nineteen Seventies onward, expanding her ministry into Communist countries (including her native Albania in 1989) and making this ‘godless’ a part of the world her last hope for dispelling her doubts.
However, Dr Alpion doesn’t think that the existence of those struggles should necessarily be seen as diminishing Mother Teresa’s legacy of religion but, in actual fact, illuminates the true depth of her spiritual journey.
“To diminish Teresa’s struggle along with her faith is to diminish her efforts. This research outlines that her lifelong battle along with her faith not only influenced her work but determined her selection of vocation and each decision after, including the charism of the Missionaries of Charity and the stages of her ministry,” he said.
“If Mother Teresa achieved anything in her life, it was her ability to boost awareness of the sacred dignity of human life, unlike anyone else, spiritual or nonspiritual. This isn’t any small feat for somebody who appeared to be so tormented.”
