From the Boundary: ‘A terrible beauty…’ Part three
At the age of 12, in 1922, little Agnes, of Skopje in Albania, determined to become a religious. Six years later, she was accepted by the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland to learn English. A year on, she was sent by the Sisters to Darjeeling as a teacher. She took her solemn vows in 1937 and years later, on a train, she received what she described as “a call within a call”, to serve the poorest of the poor by living among them in Calcutta. She wrote: “The Lord wants me to become a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross” in the Calcutta slums. Thus was born the Missionaries of Charity and the personality we know as Mother Theresa of Calcutta. “By blood”, she wrote, “I am Albanian. By citizenship an Indian. By faith I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”
By 1996 she had founded 500 missions in more than 100 countries and had been honoured by governments and universities worldwide. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She called on us all to know poor people in our neighbourhoods either through the provision of food or by simply opening our arms in joy and love. In 2003, just six years after her death, she was beatified in the Roman Church – and in just over a month’s time she is due to be canonised, elevated to sainthood.
After her death, evidence leaked out about what she called her “deepest secret”, which she expressed in this way: “To be in love and yet not to love, to live by faith and yet not to believe. To spend myself and yet to be in total darkness.” The radiant joy of her face, yes, but inside only emptiness – no love, no zeal, no belief in heaven, knowing nothing, feeling nothing, no faith. Some said she had deceived the world for years and wrote her off as a fake. Well, do we?
Some of you will have heard of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), the Spanish mystic. In his writings he explored what he called the ‘dark night of the soul’, that state where “the soul experiences fear and inner conflict….it believes it has lost its blessings for ever”, abandoned by God. The child who was once loved has become the object of God’s indifference, even hate, and there is an intense loneliness. What is in fact happening is that God is purifying the soul’s imperfections. The night works to unite lover and Beloved. The lover is “transformed” into the Beloved. Did Mother Teresa ever reach that glorious state? It seems doubtful. But in terms of the wonderful things she did in her life, does it matter?
She has certainly not been alone in experiencing the dark night. At the end of her very short life, the ‘little flower’, St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), Therese of the Child Jesus, wracked with tuberculosis, also suffered it. Unlike Mother Teresa, Therese was not ‘in’ the world. In demonstrating her love there could be no grand schemes. Her ‘way’ was thus the ‘little way’. “The only way I can prove my love”, she wrote, “is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least action for love.” At the end she acknowledged that she didn’t have the joy of faith, that atheists were her brothers and sisters, that she doubted God’s very existence. Yet she ranks with St. Francis of Assisi as one of the most popular saints in the Calendar of Saints. Of all people, her ‘dark night’ comes as a bit of a shock doesn’t it?
Should it? We’ve been reflecting, haven’t we, about our own loss of faith, what I’ve called “disenchantment”? It comes in different ways to each of us if it comes, and for a whole variety of reasons. There’s the most perfect model and exemplar of it. You remember? “My God why have you forsaken me?” Perhaps Jesus speaks for us from our own hearts. Maybe through us he re-enacts his passion, death and resurrection. Don’t we pray each week to be saved “from our time of trial” – for in essence, I suppose, that’s what we’re talking about.
Yet, aren’t we more than all our doubts? We’ve discovered, haven’t we, that we don’t need a book of rules to tease from us all that’s good and true and beautiful – that the ‘law’ is fulfilled from the heart not mere observance. We’ve also learned, maybe, to give our love for its own sake and not just to please anyone, most especially God. When we love, are we just looking for favours? Whether God seems to be present or not, what difference does it make? Indeed, maybe he’s most intimately present in his seeming absence. Do we need God for us to say “Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me”?
In short, haven’t we now acknowledged that we don’t know everything and that whether we feel the presence of God or not won’t make the slightest bit of difference to whom we are? Are we going to jettison the love in our hearts if we don’t, to change what we’ve so far been because of the dark night? Did we really just have religion out of fear – of death, of hell, of judgement – or for reward? Or have we grown up, have we found ourselves, have we understood that you really don’t need a Father Superior to be a Missionary of Charity? God doesn’t have an ego. He doesn’t need our grovelling – and if he doesn’t exist what on earth are we worrying about?
Remember what St John of the Cross says about the dark night. He says it transforms us into the Beloved. In other words, there’s no longer I and Thou, a duality. No, for we’re ‘in God’, in that state of ‘godliness’, whether we accept it, or realise it, or not, in which our light has become God’s light which doesn’t need a generator, something beyond ourselves, to fuel it.
As I say, I know nothing of your disenchantment and I realise that you may find what I’ve been saying a bit far-fetched. But let me say this. The most significant religious quality is courage not obedience, and at the end you’ve got to go it alone and be brave enough to explore. There are no grand highways and, like a bird, you’ll leave no footprints. There are no golden handshakes but only the golden lights you cast by being yourself, the ‘terrible beauty” which you’ve now become – and which is all that you were ever meant to be.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Physiology ruminations from the boundary: “A bird that cannot open and close its wings cannot fly” (Rumi).