The bride of Christ

For a long time I never really liked Mother Teresa. (am I going to hell for that?) I didn't. I guess I just thought she wasn't sincere, like she was trying to win some international popularity contest and everyone voted for her because she would touch lepers. She didn't seem normal and I couldn't relate to her. The idea that Mother Teresa was a "good person" was just too cliche to really be true.

I just finished a book about her and I can't tell you how moving it has been to realize I was wrong. Mother Teresa was a strong mystic. She longed to have encounters with Jesus. And yet she lived for decades (the majority of her life) without feeling his presence. From the letters she wrote it is clear the pain this caused her--the loneliness she felt. She tried to quench Jesus' thirst--the thirst he felt as he hung on the cross--by giving herself entirely to Him. And yet she almost always felt that he did not come to her and love her the way she so fiercely wanted to be loved.

Eventually she came to believe that this seeming rejection by Jesus was a way she could better relate to Christ's death on the cross and separation from God's love. By reliving the crucifixion she could carry maybe some ounces of Christ's pain for him.

She actually thought and spoke of herself as Christ's little spouse. He was her daily companion, her deep lover. She wanted to be married to Jesus. And she vowed never to refuse Jesus anything he asked of her.

Living out that vow and in the process discovering what it meant wasn't easy, but her faithfulness blows me away. I'll never think of her as cliche again.

But what troubled me throughout the book was the same thing I think she struggled with. She was clearly faithful, but God didn't seem faithful to her. At least, I don't understand His faithfulness. And I'm pretty sure she didn't either.

But somehow in her death I think you can see Jesus was faithful. She was old and had been near death several times. She was more and more excited as she neared her death because she knew it would be a reunion with her long distant lover.

One night she was in the Mother House--a house she had established where the sick and dying of Calcutta could die loved and with dignity--when rather suddenly she complained of back pain. Soon she was having difficulty breathing. Not to sit idly by and be the ones who let Mother Teresa die before their eyes (imagine the ridicule you might get for that...) the sisters there were ready. They brought in a doctor and a priest, a breathing machine and two independent sources of electricity. As they were about to hook up the machine, there was a city-wide power failure and Mother Teresa slowly faded away in the dark.

Though she probably could have been "saved" (in human terms) if there hadn't been a universal power outage, I think Jesus called her back into his arms. I can't imagine that kind of reunion, but I get chills thinking of how powerful Jesus' faithfulness to her felt in that moment. How in the midst of lightless night in Calcutta, God brought his light bearer to the masses back into his bright presence.

It makes me realize a little more how suffering is a part of every person's--and every believer's--experience. There are times and seasons--sometimes years and decades--where God doesn't seem faithful. I think those times are very important times in our lives. I don't understand it, but in someways I wonder if that's the point.

The book was:
Come, Be My Light.