Eloi, Eloi

     By now many of you have no doubt seen the Time Magazine article by David Van Biema on Mother Teresa's long spiritual night.  As James Kushiner's excellent post below suggests, it is an astonishing and deeply moving revelation.  In fact it cannot be understood in the world's terms; the world knows nothing like it.  The feral Christopher Hitchens is quoted to the effect that Mother Teresa came to understand what all good, brave, proud atheists know already, that there is no God, and that she declined to dig for herself an even deeper hole by coming up with "reasons" why there must be a God.

     Christians ought to know by now that there's no winning such an argument, which sets reason aside (Aquinas? Avicenna?), and which forgets its own former claims in the heat of apparent triumph.  The same people who rejoice that Mother Teresa experienced the pain of doubt used to say that she served the poor in Calcutta only because it did her good -- because she selfishly derived joy from it.  Now, if that is what it means to be "selfish," to identify yourself with the filthy and pustulent outcasts of the world, without self-aggrandizement, without promoting some great social or political program, but merely because you are commanded to love, then so be it, let us all be selfish, let us all heap up treasures of love for ourselves, the love we give and the love of God we will enjoy.  But that stretches the word "selfish" beyond all recognition.

     But it turns out that Mother Teresa's life in Calcutta was not a life of what we would recognize as joy.  I hesitate to claim that she did not know joy: as I would hesitate to claim that anyone so thoroughly abandoned to the call and life and grace of Christ could ever really be separated from Him, regardless of whether the affective response of her heart, how she felt her union with Christ, was what we call happiness.  The world thought it knew her, and thought it could dismiss her charity with a smile at her naive belief and childish enthusiasm.  But it cannot do that now, so it dismisses her by claiming her as one of its own -- not seeing that Mother Teresa's life looms as an even greater and more inexplicable mystery for those who say in their hearts, "There is no God."

     It is not a mysterious thing, after all, that a young and enthusiastic person should become disillusioned after a month or two of the squalor of the Black Hole of Calcutta.  People lose their faith all the time -- and people gain their faith all the time, and often they are the same people.  What is mysterious is that after her visions of Jesus ceased, after all the inner consolations were taken away, after the locutions, what my evangelical brethren call "words of knowledge," fell silent, still Mother Teresa clung to Christ.  She retained her faith without the emotional accompaniments (and here let married Christians take heed). She continued to serve the poor of Calcutta even though the nagging little viper at her shoulder must have whispered to her, constantly, "This is all absurd."  Let us be absolutely clear about this: outside of the ambit of Christian culture, no one goes to Calcutta.  What Mother Teresa did, no one does, not even for a year, without having been influenced by the message and example of Christ.  And to live there for good, no one does at all without the virtue of faith.

     Towards the end of the excellent film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, the rural mandarin (Robert Donat) announces his conversion to Christianity to his brethren of the village council.  He is moved not by theological argument but by the stunning example of courage shown, in utter selflessness, in willed poverty, in persevering charity, by the lady missionary (Ingrid Bergman).  He understands that when you see what is not only a new thing in the world, but a great goodness that the world on its own would never produce and cannot even explain, then you should submit to it and follow where it leads, with theology halting behind.  Here with Mother Teresa we have even more: a great goodness united to quiet suffering, unspeakable patience, and a kind of bright and steely charity, for how easy would it have been for Mother to try to salve her sores by "sharing" her feelings with her fellow sisters?  A worldly man may enter the Peace Corps because he "believes" in it and wishes to do good; he will not stay there one month after he has ceased to believe.  Mother Teresa never ceased to believe, even in and through the silence.

     Dubiety is inseparable from the human condition.  We must waver, because our knowledge comes to us piecemeal, sequentially, in time, mixed up with the static of sense impressions that lead us both toward and away from the truth we try to behold steadily.  The truths of faith are more certain than the truths arrived by rational deduction, says Aquinas, because the revealer of those truths speaks with ultimate authority, but they are less certain subjectively, from the point of view of the finite human being who receives them yet who does not, on earth, see them with the same clarity as one sees a tree or a stone or a brook.  It should give us Christians pause to consider that when Christ took upon himself our mortal flesh, he subjected himself to that same condition.  He did not doubt; His faith was steadfast; yet He did feel, at that most painful of moments upon the Cross, what it was like to be abandoned by God.  He was one with us even in that desert, a desert of suffering and love.  Nor did the Gospel writers -- those same whom the world accuses on Monday of perpetrating the most ingenious literary and theological hoax in history, and on Tuesday of being dimwitted and ignorant fishermen, easily suggestible -- refuse to tell us of that moment.

     In her love of Christ -- and the world does not understand Christ, and is not too bright about love, either -- Mother Teresa did not merely take up His cross and follow him.  She was nailed to that Cross with him.  She was one with Him -- it was His greatest and most terrible gift -- at the moment when he cried out to His Father, and the worldly Jews beneath mistook the name of God for Elijah.  We Christians must trust that she is also one with Him now too, sharing in the glory of His triumph over darkness and the grave.  "See," He says, encouraging us to persevere and be fearless, "I have overcome the world."

Comments

[Beth]

Yes, yes, oh yes. Thank you, Tony.

[Rob Grano]

Folks like Hitchens will never get it, having never experienced it. They are the same people who criticize Raskolnikov's repentance at the end of 'Crime and Punishment' as "facile," "sentimental," or a "deus ex machina" (which, of course, repentance always is.) Having never experienced repentance themselves, they can't understand how it can happen with another. Same with the "dark night."

[Reid]

Thank you for a lovely post, Dr. Esolen.

[Kamilla]

I still have a hard time comprehending how Christopher and Peter could have been raised in the same home - or how Mother Theresa could have kept on with (apparently) so little "felt" assurance.

Kamilla

[Respectabiggle]

Lewis makes much the same point in The Screwtape Letters , that many of the greatest accomplishments of the faithful have come in these moments of spiritual "dryness" and that God is particularly pleased by those who persevere without that sense of comfort and presence.

[Eric Ohlman]

Well spoken!

Here's a question that I've been struggling with since reading the article last week: What of Teresa's private entreaty to her confessor--now public--to never publish or release these private letters, lest any attention be taken away from Jesus and given to her? (I don't have the magazine with me or I'd include the quotation.) I finished the article feeling encouraged overall by the knowledge of her struggle with persistent doubt, but I also felt ashamed and voyeuristic for having this knowledge, via letters that she expressly requested be kept private. Because, after all, now my--and the world's--attention, is on her, at least for a time.

Do we just say, "Eh. Now that they're public, may God use her testimony to edify believers and to draw unbelievers to Himself"? What of the original, dishonorable (at least to me) offense of disregarding her will to publicize the letters in the first place? Bottom line: we shouldn't even be having this "conversation." Did her confessor know best? Did his expectation that believers would be edified trump her request for privacy? The question, to me, is more than rhetorical. It begs an answer, because the answer should shape our response to the knowledge.

Thanks, Tony, for your insightful (as usual) response.

[Noah Nehm]

Dubiety is inseparable from the human condition.

Exactly. As Robert Bolt has St. Thomas Moore say in the film A Man for all Seasons, "Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind."

[Tim]

Eric:

It's the strong principle in the Catholic Church of obedience. Mother Teresa may have asked for something, but her spiritual superiors decided otherwise. It is not betrayal, as the individual is not the final principle for judgement. Pesumably her superiors believed the world needed to know the saint's interior struggles to better understand Truth.

[Bill R]

Quite honestly Mother Teresa was in danger of becoming a plaster saint. This disclosure shows us she that was indeed a saint of flesh and blood. God honors that.

[Eric Ohlman]

Thanks, Tim. Being Protestant, my experience doesn't include such a principle--in the sense of "spiritual superiors."

For discussion's sake (and somewhat as a devil's advocate, because I agree with your concluding statement), Teresa's struggle was, after all, her struggle--and one, again, that she expressly requested remain private. Even if her letters don't fall within such a privilege (and it seems to me from what I've seen that they should at least be considered "confessions" in spirit), isn't Roman Catholic confession considered private? (I really don't know, although I had always assumed it was.)

In other words, what if my priest (if I were Catholic) decided that the sins I confessed in the confessional could enlighten other believers? If he and his spiritual superiors decided thus, would I--as a Catholic--be expected to go along with it? "Okay, Father, you know what's best." Wouldn't that leave much room for abuse and error? I know that didn't happen in fact, but isn't that what happened in spirit? (Not the abuse/error part, but the revealing of private confession.)

I'm not trying to pick a fight. I remain disturbed about the idea that "the individual is not the final principle for judgment." I get it, conceptually, and in a broad sense, I don't have a problem with Roman Catholic church authority for its members (and it's something my spirit has longed for in my own church experience--that someone would give a rip enough about me to say, definitively, "Such and such is wrong. Don't do it."). But the idea that another individual, spiritual superior or not, would decide what's best--against my own wishes, is a struggle for me. In Teresa's case, is it precisely because of the nature of her struggle that the decision was made to publish the letters? Because she couldn't "see clearly" due to her dark night? If so, how can it be both ways? That she was "nailed to the cross with Christ," as Tony said, but not lucid enough to decide for herself about such a thing.

Everything I am and possess belongs to God in Christ. In the Catholic Church, does that also means it belongs to my priest, his bishop, et al? Please help me understand.

[DGP]

it seems to me from what I've seen that they should at least be considered "confessions" in spirit.

What you've said is mostly correct, except for this. There's a world of difference between sacramental confession and written letters. The seal of the confessional should never be broken, not even indirectly; nor should it appear to be broken.

Written letters, by convention, are understood to be the property of the recipient. Disclosure to a third party, or publication, normally involves the courtesy of obtaining the permission of the writer, but this is not strictly required, and in many cases the recipient will conisder himself absolved by the death of the writer. Whether in this particular case he was prudent to do so is debatable, but his decision should not be conflated with the breach of the confessional seal.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Eric,

There is a difference here between the ordinary RC In the pews and Mother Teresa. The ordinary Catholic is not under a special, particular, extraordinary vow of obedience. Thus a confession (or even "para-confession", to coin a term) could never be made public in the manner you suggest. (A formal sacramental confession also could and would never be published by the RC Church either, not even under Motehr Teresa's unique circumstances.) But Mother Teresa was under such a vow; she placed her self in advance under a special and all-inclusive directive that all she said and did would be entirely at the disposal of the Church in a way not required of an ordinary believer. And she submitted to that vow in obedience.

For a parallel, but somewhat different, example, consider that St. Therese Liseaux was ordered to write her spiritual autobiography under obedience befor her death at age 24 -- and the result was that she became one of only two dozen people ever designated by the Magisterium as a "Doctor of the Church."

By the way, in case you're new to MC, I am not an RC.

[Eric Ohlman]

DGP & James: Thanks very much for the insights! They're deeply appreciated and they certainly help me to understand the situation better.

[Lucy]

Excellent post, Dr. Esolen. Thank you.

[Josiah A. Roelfsema]

A good song I thought appropriate (it's even better if you can hear it):

The Silence of God (album "Love and Thunder")

It's enough to drive a man crazy;
it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder
if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort
from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer
is the silence of God

It'll shake a man's timbers
when he loses his heart
When he has to remember
what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy,
but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen
by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen
to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes
of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles
have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times
when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes...

There's a statue of Jesus
on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky,
all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden,
as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping
and He's weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows,
he never forgot
What sorrow is carried
by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve
into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

- Andrew Peterson

[Brian in Fresno]

I very much appreciate your post Dr. Esolen. I might be able to speak to Eric as a friend of mine gave me great perspective. There are many psalms that David probably didn't want published, but in God's great mercy and grace to us, they were published.

[GL]

And, of course, from the Psalm from which our Lord was praying when He uttered those words on the Cross:

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,

and by night, but I find no rest.

As the preamble to this Psalm tells us, this was "A Psalm of David." By the logic of atheists who now see Mother Theresa as one of them, they would have to add both David and (as Tony is pointing out) even our Lord. These poor souls just do not understand. There eyes have been blinded. May He open their eyes to see.

[Yaknyeti]

That's a pretty neat song, Josiah. Thanks for sharing it.

And I second third fourth agree with everyone else as to the beauty of this post in general.

[Bill R]

As usual (IMHO) Al Mohler gets to the heart of the issue re Mother Teresa in his column today:

[Susan Peterson]

Frankly, I think it is outrageous for Al Mohler even to suggest that Mother Teresa's faith was, or might have been, in anything but Jesus Christ himself. Much less, "in her own faithfulness." How narrow to think this is in doubt because she did not speak with the vocabulary he is used to.
Susan Peterson

[James A. Altena]

I agree with Susan. Mohler's remarks about Mother Teresa in the third paragraph from the end and the final paragraph are completely off base. They unfortuantely betray the streak of rationalism that is one of the Achilles' heel of evangelical theology, and show surprisingly little understanding of or compassion for the nature of spiritual struggle. And if Mohler was truly concerned not to judge, then he would not make the implicit judgment that he does in the "concerns" he voices about Mother Teresa.

[Bill R]

Well, I guess THAT article brought out some differences! ;-)

I haven't read the original Time article, so I'll reserve judgment. I'm not sure what the rationalism is that James objects to, however, since James is about as rational creature as I've ever known. And thankfully so!

[DGP]

They unfortuantely betray the streak of rationalism that is one of the Achilles' heel of evangelical theology...

One doesn't hear that accusation very often! I'm not saying Mr. Altena is wrong: Achilles' heels are often hidden matters. Still, it's amusing.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"I possess no ability to read Mother Teresa's heart, but I do sincerely hope that her faith was in Christ, and not in her own faithfulness" writes Al Mohler.

Hoping is not judging. Hoping is hoping.

[Bill R]

I’ve now read the Time article, but find no reference to what Dr. Mohler says:

“As an evangelical Christian, I have to be concerned that part of Mother Teresa's struggle was that she did not consider herself worthy of salvation.”

Perhaps that statement is in the book, but Mohler didn’t say that. I find nothing in the article that claims Mother Teresa “did not consider herself worthy of salvation,” only that for most of her life she lacked any feeling of the presence of Christ in her life. It is certainly most odd: it has marked similarities to the experiences of other prominent Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant), but it’s certainly at the extreme end of things. Additionally, some of her statements are, to put it mildly, rather strange: “I want to love Jesus as He has never been loved before.” “If I ever become a Saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven—to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth.” Well, everyone’s entitled to one or two strange statements in the course of one’s life. I didn’t find my basic high opinion of Mother Teresa altered. She was truly an extraordinary Christian. I did, however, find my low opinion of Christopher Hitchens burrow lower still. That man is utterly vile.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>“As an evangelical Christian, I have to be concerned that part of Mother Teresa's struggle was that she did not consider herself worthy of salvation.”<<<

Dr. Mohler is apparently unaware of the long tradition of self-effacement among monastics and mystics of both East and West. Part of the monastic discipline is a total death to self, and as a concomitant of that, to see one's self as one would be seen before the dreadful judgement throne of Christ.

A story is told of a very holy monk on Athos, beloved of everyone, considered by all to be a living saint. One day, a novice came to his cell and saw him on his knees before an icon of Christ, weeping copiously. "Why are you crying, Abba?", asked the novice. "I am crying for my sins", replied the old monk. "But Abba, you are a great and holy man. What sins can you have committed":, asked the novice. "Ah, my son", the monk replied, "If you could only see all of my sins, there would not be enough water in the oceans for my tears".

The monk's point, I think, was two-fold: even the most holy person sins constantly, "in thought, and word and deed" as one Byzantine prayer puts it. Which brings us to the second point: NONE of us are "worthy" of salvation. Salvation is an act of pure grace on the part of God, for we are all condemned from our own mouths every day. Thus, if we are saved, it is only through divine grace, which God bestows upon all of us, unworthy though we may be, so that we might have the opportunity to take up the gift, and by cooperating with grace, become partakers of the divine nature.

[DGP]

For not a few Christians, "worthy" is something Jesus doesn't expect me to be, but something without which others will scandalize me.

[Bill R]

"Which brings us to the second point: NONE of us are "worthy" of salvation."

Well actually, Stuart, that was Mohler's point. He built his post on it. My point was that there was nothing in the Time article on this. (But I don't know if it is in the book.)

[James A. Altena]

Since Bill and Fr. DGP ask (or remark) --

The two problematic statements in Mohler's otherwise fine blog are:

"As an evangelical Christian, I have to be concerned that part of Mother Teresa's struggle was that she did not consider herself worthy of salvation."

"I possess no ability to read Mother Teresa's heart, but I do sincerely hope that her faith was in Christ, and not in her own faithfulness."

The first statement's "concern" presumes to cast an unwarranted judgmental doubt on Mother Teresa. The "hope" of the second statement is similarly judgmental or else simply gratuitous. Would Dr. Mohler likewise appreciate it if I expressed "concern" about his salvation on the basis of apparent judgmentalism? The point is that, as I noted on my post on another thread about judgment, we may judge actions, but not another person's state of salvation.

The "rationalism" I refer to lies behind the first statement. Beign rationalistic is different from being rational, the former being a one-sided distortion of the latter that presses beyond proper bounds. Despite the emotionalism and lack of proper logic that afflicts much of popular evangelical religion in the USA, there is a strong rationalist steak in the approach to Scripture, embodied in e.g. the idea that the entire Bible is written in terms of propositional revelation.

My specific reference here was to an unspoken but clearly implicit assumption behind Dr. Mohler's remarks that if one simply knows the correct (and propositional) interpretation of some verse or related set of verses in Scripture, then one will not or should not be subject to certain temptations, and that anyone who is so subject has a seriously defective faith. Here, the implicit suggestion (and hence the cause for "concern") from Mohler is that Mother Teresa somehow did not rightly understand that no-one is worthy of salvation. Had she understood that (from a good Protestant evangelical perspective), then she would not have suffered her doubts.

Of course, this misreading of Mother Teresa results in part from Dr. Mohler presuming upon false Protestant stereotypes about all Catholics thinking that they can "earn" salvation and be "worthy" of God, and thus trusting to their "own faithfulness". Stuart has already addressed Dr. Mohler's misconception very well. And Dr. Mohler has missed the obvious point that Mother's Teresa's perseverance despite her palpable sense of God's absence demonstrates precisely that she was *not* putting trust in "her own faithfulness", but in God. To have relied upon her own sense of personal experience of faith instead, as so many evangelicals do, would have been to do precisely that over which Dr. Mohler expresses his concern.

But a further problem lies in the implicit notion that somehow a formal intellectual grasp of some Biblical concept should necessarily banish all fears and doubts. It betrays an overly simplistic, rationalistic attitude toward the complexity of the broken inter-relations between the rational and non-rational aspects of our fallen human natures to expect that *knowing* some concept intellectually will necessarily override contrary emotional and intuitive responses to overall conditions. (The passage in C. S. Lews' "That Hideous Strength" about believing in ghosts comes to mind here.)

If my reaction here was strong, it is because I had injurious personal experience of this. Some 20+ years ago I was similarly struggling with doubts that God wanted to or would save me, and a sense of abandonment by Him, because of a particular and very deeply rooted besetting sin -- to the point that suicide was a serious temptation. A good friend recommended that I talk to the pastor of his independent evangelical church. I did so, and at that first meeting the pastor listened sympathetically and prayed with me. A few weeks later I asked to see him again. When it became apparent that my struggle had not simply gone away after the previous meeting, the pastor impatiently grabbed his Bible, opened it, and in a hectoring voice began lecturing me: "Look! It says right here in Romans 7 that ... and here in Matthew that ... [etc.] If you knew the Scriptures you wouldn't be having this problem." Of course, I already knew all of those passages by heart. I left in slience and never came back, but I wanted to scram at him, "OF COURSE I know all those passages!! Can't you understand that *knowing* them doesn't automatically change the way I *feel*??" (It is ironic how some evangelicals will accuse Catholics of having a "magical" view of sacraments while taking a positively shamanistic view of Scripture as consisting of magical incantational formulae.)

That encounter did me some serious spiritual injury, in making me feel even further isolated and rejected. It was only when I came to Philadelphia, and had Fr. Ousley as a perceptive and sympathetic confessor explain to me the "dark night of the soul" of St. John of the Cross, that my situation became bearable after years of torment. Unlike Mother Teresa I have been granted some progress. But, as St. Teresa of Avila learned, as part of sharing in the Cross, God gives much suffering to those He would make great saints. Surely Mother Teresa's seeming abandoment by the Deus absconditus, reflecting the utter abandonment by the world of all those for whom she and her order have cared in this life, was a tremendous sign of the extraordinary holiness He was cultivating in her, proven by her faithful, trusting perseverance unto the end. If I have been granted some respite, it is a sign of God's mercy to one whose weakness could not begin to bear what Mother Teresa endured, or hope to begin to approach her in saintliness.

[GL]

I have to say that I agree with Stuart and James here as to a weakness in Protestantism. Now I know Dr. Mohler does not believe the following, but I also know many Protestants do: There are some who have such a strong aversion to works righteousness that they view with suspicion the faith of anyone who professes Christ and also devotes himself to many works, especially someone like Mother Theresa, who makes such extreme sacrifices in the name of her faith. They say, or at least think, that someone working so hard must be counting on her works to save her rather than on grace through faith and not of works. Now, when that person expresses doubts, yet works as hard as Mother Theresa did, those "concerns" grow. In Mother Theresa's case, however, her doubts were not that His grace was insufficient, but in whether He existed at all. If He does not exist (that is, if He is not really God Incarnate who died on a cross and rose from the dead three days later, but was just a man who died a terrible death and then was buried and that was it), then both her faith and her works were in vain. Her works, in this case, show her faith, as St. James wrote. Faith, like love and hate, is a verb; it is what you do not what you feel. If "[b]lessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” then, based on these new revelations about her doubts, Mother Theresa must be blessed indeed, for she appears to have continued to believe despite her lack of seeing.

Was Mother Theresa finally saved? Only God knows. But if we know them by their fruits and if we recognize Christians by their love, then the evidence appears compelling. If I understand the process of canonization, that is its purpose, to determine whether the Church can definitively declare someone to be a saint (i.e., that he or she is in fact saved). While we Protestants do not see the need for this process, its existence is in fact a sort of tipping of the hat in Dr. Mohler's direction, for until the Church declares someone a saint (or at least blessed), it is leaving open the possibility that he or she is not saved. The Church is examining the evidence before making such a declaration lest it wrongfully declare someone to be a saint. So lets not read too much into his remarks. As TUAD wrote, hoping is hoping.

[James A. Altena]

Dear GL,

First, the Time magazine article notes that in all of the letters, there are only two that could be interpreted as voicing any doubt about God's existence -- and to me even those don't really indicate that, as opposed to indicating a feeling within her.

Second the quotes from Dr. Mohler do *not* express "concern" about Mother Teresa regarding her doubting belief in God. Instead, he did so on the basis of a stereotyped "works righteousness" view of RCs -- i.e., being "worthy of salvation" and having faith "in her own faithfulness" instead of Jesus Christ. So I don't think I'm reading anything into Mohler. He clearly put his cards on the table.

Also, the "hope" that Dr. Mohler expresses regarding Mother Teresa is one of doubt, not one of confidence and trust. And Christian charity is not restricted in applying the latter to those who are not yet officially declared saints. (That declaration being for purposes of official veneration, not a judgment on the certainty of salvation, though of course the latter is entailed in the former.) I hold such hope with regard to several persons I have known who have preceded me in passing from this life to the next; and (along with e.g. C. S. Lewis -- "Letters to Malcolm") based on that I am not afraid occasionally to ask their prayers for me, as well as to pray for them. If I err, it is an unknowing error and not a sin, made from charity, for which God will not condemn me.

Finally, while Mother Teresa and Dr. Mohler had and have differing offices in the Church Militant, if I were asked to place bets on whose life and ministry have more completely fulfilled the Gospel, Mother Teresa wins hands down. Especially since the life Mother Tersa lived was a unique teaching office to all mankind, not just from a seminary chair.

[Stuart Koehl]

Congratulations to Tony for being cited in this thread in The Washington Times today (9/3/07).

[Judy Warner]

It's actually September 4 and the link is here, on the Washington Times's always interesting Culture Etc. page.

[Bill R]

James and GL, fine posts by both of you. While I'm a great fan of Al Mohler's, here he was clearly too hasty in his judgment and I believe his surmise was unwarranted. James makes some excellent points on spiritual counseling. I would only suggest caution in pitting the issue of anyone's salvation against that of Mother Teresa. I think all of us would come up rather short in such comparisons.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Bill,

I don't think anyone's salvation should be pitted against anyone else's period. But if one presumes to make any comments regarding another person's salvation, then one places one's self at the same bar of judgment in turn.

[DGP]

I recently read Christopher Hitchens' most recent slander of Mother Theresa in *Newsweek,* and it helped me put words to something I've been thinking about.

Mother T's peculiarly intense feeling of God's absence was not simply a protracted "dark night of the soul," a la John of the Cross. Nor was it only an extraordinary share in the Lord's Cross, her suspension in that moment of "Eloi, Eloi," as I mentioned in an earlier thread. It was both of those things, but it was more.

MT's pain was also a condign form of substitutionary atonement, similar to the sort of thing Charles Williams wrote of in *Descent into Hell.*. It was condign because it logically and poetically expressed the relationship between God and this generation. It was substitutionary because it was experienced in its fuller measure by Mother Theresa, who least deserved it, rather than by the rest of her generation, many of whom did indeed deserve it.

The condignity is evident when one considers the contemporary approach to truth. We peel away layer after layer of the onion, always eager to get deeper than the next guy, always neglecting the possibility that the onion may subsist somewhere other than the legendary core. We think and speak of God as someone who can be chased out of the causal and purposive architecture of our lives, a kind of reverse God-of-the-gaps approach. We deconstruct even our fellow man into a bag of chemicals and neural phantasms; is it any wonder that God should withdraw, if only to spare us the opportunity for the rawest blasphemies? Mother T's feeling of God's absence is exactly the sort of thing we've been seeking for years, exactly the sort of thing Mr. Hitchens would impose on us if he could. We would rather have no God at all than face the competition for our own imagined divinity.

Thanks be to God, we don't always get what we ask for. But as we live a communal as well as personal existence, we hold important elements of life and even spirituality in common, and sometimes specially sensitive souls will experience the truth of our common existence in a way we cruder souls are spared. Mother Theresa, a woman of profound honesty and discipline, experienced in her own prayer the burden we put on her shoulders -- a impediment against God, against truth, against trust in the symbolic and sacramental assurances that the Lord offers us as tokens of a love he is not yet prepared to consummate.

If you think about it, this dynamic is not all that unusual. Every generation appears to have its heroes of discipleship, those who live as members of their own generation and experience the consequences of its virtues and vices, and who at the same time live as followers of the crucified Messiah, victims alongside the Victim. One of Mother Theresa's namesakes, St. Therese of Lisieux, was probably another such hero.

One irony is that Mother Theresa does indeed vindicate Christopher Hitchens -- not in the way he expects, by confirming the alleged truth of his atheism, but by emerging faithful, loving, and victorious *despite* the climate of Satanic denial which the 20th century bequeathed to her.

Mother Theresa has become for us one of the signs of the Lord's affection and power, signs which she herself could not fully trust. May the Lord forgive us for what we did to her -- indeed, what we do to Him, even as He suffered to remove the orphaned status we still cling to.

[Stuart Koehl]

What I find interesting about this is Mother Teresa's "Dark Night" was no closely-held secret or even a recent discovery. See, for example, this essay in First Things, from 2003:

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=486

[Bill R]

"But if one presumes to make any comments regarding another person's salvation, then one places one's self at the same bar of judgment in turn."

No doubt, James. But it may not be prudent for one who is not the target to do so, even if the target can no longer do so for herself. It is a spiritually dangerous activity.

DGP, a most eloquent post. You've given me much to think about.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"But if one presumes to make any comments regarding another person's salvation, then one places one's self at the same bar of judgment in turn."

Geez, I was hoping someone else would do this. Oh well. Uhhhh James, that statement is not quite entirely correct.

Jesus and the Bible makes it rather explicitly clear that we are to make discernment about another person's eternal destiny. That entails making (wise) judgments and comments if necessary.

Wherefore do I speak? Simple. The Great Commission in Matthew.

Missionaries and evangelists (even regular folks) are called to share the Gospel with the lost. This presumes you have to make judgments about who doesn't know Christ and who doesn't have salvation. Then you have to make comments/dialogue/conversation to the person that you're trying to share the Good News with.

I think you're trying to say that Christians should not be making judgmental comments about the salvation of another "Christian". But even then, I wouldn't say that this is a blanket 100% rule.

For example, Bishop John Shelby Spong. Although I can't say for sure, I don't feel bad for expressing my opinion that I don't think Spong is a Christian. And that I think he is a terrible heretic and apostate who is leading many people astray.

And if any Christian leader or anyone on this site says the same thing about Spong and implicitly judging his eternal destiny, I would not say that that person is being unfairly judgmental about Spong.

[DGP]

DGP, a most eloquent post. You've given me much to think about.

Thank you. I wrote it this morning under the assumption that no one would read it, since this thread has sunk beneath the weight of more recent threads. The writing helped me think, but I'm also pleased that at least one person read it, and liked it.

[James A. Altena]

Fr. DGP,

I respectfully submit you are wrong about us being called upon to judge another person's salvation. I left a very lengthy analysis on the topic of judgment on another MC thread recently. Allow me to suggest that you read it before replying to this.

[James A. Altena]

The thread in question is "Fish Riding Bicycles"

[DGP]

Fr. DGP, I respectfully submit you are wrong about us being called upon to judge another person's salvation.

Mr. Altena,

In this, as in several other cases, you are wrong about me. I was not a part of this particular argument.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>In this, as in several other cases, you are wrong about me. I was not a part of this particular argument.<<<

In any case, the Church has been judging other persons' salvation almost from the beginning. Popular piety acclamed the martyrs as being saved by virtue of their witness in blood. Later, various men and women were acclaimed for their manifest holiness and acts of charity. That's how the cult of the saints developed, until the process was made more formal and brought under some degree of regulation by ecclesiastical authority.

So, at the very least, we can definitely judge who is saved. The unbroken practice of the Church demonstrates that in the proclamation of saints and their veneration both privately and liturgically. We do not have the same sanction for judging who is damned, though to read the language of the many anathemas declared over the centuries, you might get that impression. But actually, we don't have anything at all like the Roman "damnatio memoriae", where all trace of a person is eradicated from public consciousness (in effect, creating un-persons), but rather the anathemas attack specific beliefs of teachings, not so much the teachers themselves. It has always been a principal of Christian charity not to presume that God's mercy is automatically withheld--or MUST be withheld from anyone. That would presume to tell God what He can and cannot do.

[James A. Altena]

Fr. DGP,

My apology in this case. My eyes scanned the page too quickly, and I thought part of a post by TUAD was part of a preceding post by you.

Stuart,

You missed my point. The Church can indeed judge the salvation of someone; but the individual believer on his own cannot.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>You missed my point. The Church can indeed judge the salvation of someone; but the individual believer on his own cannot.<<<

I would disagree to the extent that the process of recognizing a person as a saint was something that developed from the bottom-up. That is to say, there has always been spontaneous recognition of the sanctity of certain people, and when they died, their tombs became places of pilgrimage for those seeking their intercession. This resulted in the development of local shrines and cults of saints as an organic movement of individual believers. The process has to begin when ONE person addresses a peition or lights a candle for a particular deceased person. Others join in, and finally the local cult becomes a regionals cult and finally a universal cult. The Western Church centralized and formalized the process in response to certain abuses, but the Eastern Churches are still much less formal, and the process of glorification still works mainly from the bottom-up. If you want to call that whole process "the Church", then I suppose it is. But the process begins with an individual judging the salation of someone.

What I do not see, however, is the Church or any individual judging the damnation of a person.

[James A. Altena]

Stuart,

You still miss my point. One person may have an opinion (I have previously mentioned elsewhere my prayers for departed friends, and requests for their prayers for me), but he may not present it as a judgment, which is something different. Short of extraordinary direct divine revelation (which is also subject to examination and verification by the Church), that one person may not claim certain knowledge as to the fate of another soul.

You also need to refer back to my extensive post on judgment under the thread "Fish Riding Bicycles". As I pointed out there, the most common sense of "judgment" in Scripture is adversarial and condemnatory, not neutrally evaluative. You have already agreed that the Church does not officially pronounce anyone to be damned. I agree, and that is my point -- a particular person is not allowed to make that kind of judgment either. I am talking about Matt. 7:1-5 and Romans 2 here. Recognition of saints is quite a different issue. You keep talking past my points instead of addressing them.