Mother Teresa - an Atheist or a Saint of Darkness?

An article in Time hints that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was an agnostic or even an atheist deep inside. A book due to be released on September 4, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light", includes letters of the mother written over 66 years to colleagues, confessors and superiors.
The author of this book is not any anti-religious investigative reporter, but a member of the Missionaries of Charity she founded, and a staunch supporter for her sainthood, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk.

The letters are on various topics, but strikingly reveal her inner torment. The excerpts quoted in the article vividly bring out the angst she suppressed within her for decades (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html).

• "Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself -- for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead". "It has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work.'" (1953)
  
• "Such deep longing for God -- and ... repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. (Saving) souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing -- pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything." (1956)
  
• "If there be no God -- there can be no soul -- if there is no Soul then Jesus -- You also are not true." (1959)
  
• "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." (1962)
  
• "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear," (1979).
  
• "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God -- tender, personal love," she wrote to a friend. "If you were (there), you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"
  "I utter words of community prayers -- and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give -- but my prayer of union is not there any longer -- I no longer pray."

Her anguish continued till her death in 1997.

The letters are unlikely to affect her cause for sainthood as the church is waiting for a second “miracle” to complete her canonization. The church has already come out with arguments to justify her torment. Her successor, Sr. Nirmala, said that the darkness experienced by Mother Teresa (for over 50 years!) was God’s way of leading her towards the path of purification and transformation .(http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/27/stories/2007082761202200.htm ). A former Ambassador to the Vatican said that Mother Teresa’s torment was a struggle with Satan himself and should not block her ascension to sainthood (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=1019490 ).

I have always wondered about the inner feelings of people who spent a “life time serving God” – i.e. what do these professional servants of god think of their elusive master. It appears that there could be no better example than the letters of Mother Teresa written over such a long period of time.

In fact, Mother Teresa wrote in 1946 that Jesus called her to abandon her work as a teacher with Loreto Sisters to be with "the slums" of the city of Calcutta (Kolkotta), dealing directly with "the poorest of the poor" — the sick, the dying, beggars and street children. "Come, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor," he told her. "Come be My light."

Thus, she abandoned everything and plunged deep into the service of the “poorest of poor”, with a strong belief that "actually we are touching Christ's body in the poor. In the poor it is the hungry Christ that we are feeding, it is the naked Christ that we are clothing, it is the homeless Christ that we are giving shelter".
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/presentation-speech.html)

Then for some reason, Jesus decides that enough is enough, and turns off that light. For the next 50 or so years, she leads a miserable life, struggling and yearning for the light that eluded her for ever.

Now, imagine yourself in the company of the poorest of the poor. You see nothing but hunger, desolation, sickness, and malnutrition all around you. Sooner or later, wouldn’t you start to have doubts about a naked, hungry, or even a homeless Christ? Did He bring suffering to a select group of people in a third-world country, so that certain other pious people like Mother Teresa could serve them and thus touch the body of Christ? How could you reconcile to that justice? Is the suffering of the poorest of poor in India and other third-world countries a gift from God? A toy for the rich to play with – to realize and touch their God by serving the poor?

For the church, Mother Teresa alive was a huge money-making machine – Millions of dollars poured in from every corner of the world supposedly to serve the multitude of homeless and hungry Christs in Calcutta and elsewhere. Skeptics ask “Where are those Millions?”(http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/ ) – According to them, there is no visible evidence to show that money is spent to alleviate suffering – there are no real hospitals, no real schools, no orphanages with humane facilities etc., they say. A video clip available at You tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q1m-8npkJ4) may help you to make up your mind.

No doubt, the Vatican will canonize Mother Teresa sooner than later – they know a Saint Teresa will bring in billions!