THE FORSAKEN:

Newly released letters tell of Jesus calling Mother Teresa 'my little wife' (STEPHEN FRASER, 12/08/2002, The Scotsman)

MOTHER TERESA had visions in which she saw the Virgin Mary and talked to Jesus, newly-published letters have revealed. In her visions, Jesus called her "my little wife" and "my dear little woman" and told her to found a new order of nuns devoted to helping the poor in India.

The letters she wrote to two priests, who acted as her spiritual mentors, also reveal that Mother Teresa - who died in 1997 aged 87 - suffered episodes of depression throughout her life in which she underwent grave crises of faith. [...]

Her letters suggest the 1947 vision was her last experience of "dialogue" with Jesus. Later communications suggest profound religious doubt. In one letter, dated 1958, she wrote: "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains."

Because she kept a smile on her face, she wrote, people "think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fill my heart. If only they knew."

Mother Teresa was more explicit in another item of correspondence: "The damned of Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist."

Apparently this bothers or gladdens some folks. But if this is so:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabach'thani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

...if Christ despaired (which is, after all, the most important aspect of his sojourn here among us), how could any mere human, even a saint, not suffer their own crises of faith? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2003 8:41 PM