Re: ~Crisis of Faith~PART 2 * A MUST READ...

[Guest guest]

Sweet ,

Sorry to get back to you so late, the old saying " so much to

do, so little time, hehe " I thank you for posting this second part

of the article on Mother . She is a beautiful and loving

lady. I see how it is difficult and we all wear masks. She did make

an amazing impact on me, and despite her concerns about her faith and

loss of faith, I still feel she did amazing things for people. This

was incredibly wonderful and I thank you again, dear for posting

this! Love and light, LUNA

--- In , " karmarqu69 " <karmarqu69@...>

wrote:

>

> ~Crisis of Faith~PART 2

>

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>

> This is PART 2 of an article that I read in TIME magazine..

>

> I was so humbled and enlightened that I felt I needed to share…

> I know this is a bit long but I come to you and ask that you read

this..

>

> I feel that this will bring you to some understanding of this

sometimes

> dark and lonely spiritual journey we are on..

>

> Mother was an amazing soul and touched so many in her life..

Her

> life and path was set by way of sacrifice. This sacrifice as you

will

> read left her empty.. Truly empty..

>

> After reading this.. I sat in silent prayer and tears..What Mother

> fulfilled and sacrificed drained her faith..

>

> What kept going through my mind over and over as I read this, were

the

> words given to God while on the cross.. " Why have you forsaken

> me " ?

>

> While hearing this many different thoughts came rushing through

me.. As

> they will you..

>

> This is a story of our light, our faith, our darkness, and our lack

of

> faith as we sit in darkness at times..

> Many, many of our Spiritual leaders have been on this very path,

and it

> is well documented..

>

> We are not alone at those times of darkness as we struggle to

continue

> on this journey..

>

> Enough said.. Please take a moment and read..

>

> I will be sending out part two in a little while..

> I send much love to all of you!

> Love

> ~Karma

>

>

>

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>

> Explanations

> Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?

> — to the Rev. Lawrence Picachy, August 1959

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>

> Why did 's communication with Jesus, so vivid and nourishing

in

> the months before the founding of the Missionaries, evaporate so

> suddenly? Interestingly, secular and religious explanations travel

for a

> while on parallel tracks. Both understand (although only one

celebrates)

> that identification with Christ's extended suffering on the Cross,

> undertaken to redeem humanity, is a key aspect of Catholic

spirituality.

> told her nuns that physical poverty ensured empathy

in " giving

> themselves " to the suffering poor and established a stronger bond

with

> Christ's redemptive agony.

>

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>

> She wrote in 1951 that the Passion was the only aspect of Jesus'

life

> that she was interested in sharing: " I want to ... drink ONLY [her

> emphasis] from His chalice of pain. " And so she did, although by all

> indications not in a way she had expected.

>

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>

> Kolodiejchuk finds divine purpose in the fact that 's

spiritual

> spigot went dry just as she prevailed over her church's perceived

> hesitations and saw a successful way to realize Jesus' call for her.

>

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>

> " She was a very strong personality, " he suggests. " And a strong

> personality needs stronger purification " as an antidote to pride. As

> proof that it worked, he cites her written comment after receiving

an

> important prize in the Philippines in the 1960s: " This means

nothing to

> me, because I don't have Him. "

> And yet " the question is, Who determined the abandonment she

> experienced? " says Dr. Gottlieb, a teacher at the New York

> Psychoanalytic Society & Institute who has written about the church

and

> who was provided a copy of the book by TIME. " Could she have

imposed it

> on herself? "

>

>

>

> Psychologists have long recognized that people of a certain

personality

> type are conflicted about their high achievement and find ways to

punish

> themselves. Gottlieb notes that 's ambitions for her ministry

were

> tremendous. Both he and Kolodiejchuk are fascinated by her

statement, " I

> want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before. " Remarks the

> priest: " That's a kind of daring thing to say. " Yet her letters are

full

> of inner conflict about her accomplishments. Rather than simply

giving

> all credit to God, Gottlieb observes, she agonizes incessantly

that " any

> taking credit for her accomplishments — if only internally — is

> sinful " and hence, perhaps, requires a price to be paid. A mild

secular

> analog, he says, might be an executive who commits a horrific social

> gaffe at the instant of a crucial promotion. For , " an

occasion

> for a modicum of joy initiated a significant quantity of misery, "

and

> her subsequent successes led her to perpetuate it.

> Gottlieb also suggests that starting her ministry " may have marked a

> turning point in her relationship with Jesus, " whose urgent claims

she

> was finally in a position to fulfill. Being the active party, he

> speculates, might have scared her, and in the end, the only way to

> accomplish great things might have been in the permanent and less

risky

> role of the spurned yet faithful lover.

>

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>

> The atheist position is simpler. In 1948, Hitchens ventures,

> finally woke up, although she could not admit it. He likens her to

> die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: " There was a huge

> amount of cognitive dissonance, " he says. " They thought, 'Jesus, the

> Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I'm not supposed to think that. It

> means my life is meaningless.' They carried on somehow, but the

> mainspring was gone. And I think once the mainspring is gone, it

cannot

> be repaired. " That, he says, was .

> Most religious readers will reject that explanation, along with any

that

> makes her the author of her own misery — or even defines it as true

> misery.

>

> , responding to the torch-song image of ,

counterproposes

> her as the heroically constant spouse. " Let's say you're married

and you

> fall in love and you believe with all your heart that marriage is a

> sacrament. And your wife, God forbid, gets a stroke and she's

comatose.

> And you will never experience her love again. It's like loving and

> caring for a person for 50 years and once in a while you complain to

> your spiritual director, but you know on the deepest level that she

> loves you even though she's silent and that what you're doing makes

> sense.

>

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> Mother knew that what she was doing made sense. "

>

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>

> Integration

> I can't express in words — the gratitude I owe you for your kindness

> to me — for the first time in ... years — I have come to love

> the darkness — for I believe now that it is part of a very, very

> small part of Jesus' darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to

> accept it [as] a 'spiritual side of your work' as you wrote — Today

> really I felt a deep joy — that Jesus can't go anymore through the

> agony — but that He wants to go through it in me.

> — to Neuner, Circa 1961

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>

> There are two responses to trauma: to hold onto it in all its

vividness

> and remain its captive, or without necessarily " conquering " it, to

> gradually integrate it into the day-by-day. After more than a

decade of

> open-wound agony, seems to have begun regaining her spiritual

> equilibrium with the help of a particularly perceptive adviser. The

Rev.

> ph Neuner, whom she met in the late 1950s and confided in

somewhat

> later, was already a well-known theologian, and when she turned to

him

> with her " darkness, " he seems to have told her the three things she

> needed to hear: that there was no human remedy for it (that is, she

> should not feel responsible for affecting it); that feeling Jesus

is not

> the only proof of his being there, and her very craving for God was

a

> " sure sign " of his " hidden presence " in her life; and that the

absence

> was in fact part of the " spiritual side " of her work for Jesus.

> This counsel clearly granted a tremendous sense of release.

For

> all that she had expected and even craved to share in Christ's

Passion,

> she had not anticipated that she might recapitulate the particular

> moment on the Cross when he asks, " My God, My God, why have you

forsaken

> me? " The idea that rather than a nihilistic vacuum, his felt absence

> might be the ordeal she had prayed for, that her perseverance in its

> face might echo his faith unto death on the Cross, that it might

indeed

> be a grace, enhancing the efficacy of her calling, made sense of her

> pain. Neuner would later write, " It was the redeeming experience of

her

> life when she realized that the night of her heart was the special

share

> she had in Jesus' passion. " And she thanked Neuner profusely:

>

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>

> " I can't express in words — the gratitude I owe you for your

> kindness to me — for the first time in ... years — I have come

> to love the darkness. "

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>

>

> Not that it didn't continue to torment her. Years later, describing

the

> joy in Jesus experienced by some of her nuns, she observed dryly to

> Neuner, " I just have the joy of having nothing — not even the

> reality of the Presence of God [in the Eucharist]. " She described

her

> soul as like an " ice block. " Yet she recognized Neuner's key

> distinction, writing,

>

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> " I accept not in my feelings — but with my will, the Will of God

> — I accept His will. "

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>

> Although she still occasionally worried that she might " turn a

Judas to

> Jesus in this painful darkness, " with the passage of years the

absence

> morphed from a potential wrecking ball into a kind of ragged

> cornerstone. Says Gottlieb, the psychoanalyst:

>

> " What is remarkable is that she integrated it in a way that enabled

her

> to make it the organizing center of her personality, the beacon for

her

> ongoing spiritual life. " Certainly, she understood it as essential

> enough to project it into her afterlife.

>

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>

> " 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, " she wrote in 1962.

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>

> Theologically, this is a bit odd since most orthodox Christianity

> defines heaven as God's eternal presence and doesn't really provide

for

> regular no-shows at the heavenly feast. But it is, Kolodiejchuk

> suggests, her most moving statement, since the sacrifice involved is

> infinite. " When she wrote,

>

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>

> 'I am willing to suffer ... for all eternity, if this [is]

possible,' "

> he says, " I said, Wow. "

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> He contends that the letters reveal her as holier than anyone knew.

> However formidable her efforts on Christ's behalf, it is even more

> astounding to realize that she achieved them when he was not

available

> to her — a bit like a person who believes she can't walk winning the

> Olympic 100 meters. Kolodiejchuk goes even further. Catholic

theologians

> recognize two types of " dark night " : the first is purgative,

cleansing

> the contemplative for a " final union " with Christ; the second is

> " reparative, " and continues after such a union, so that he or she

may

> participate in a state of purity even closer to that of Jesus and

,

> who suffered for human salvation despite being without sin.

>

> By the end, writes Kolodiejchuk, " by all indications this was the

case

> with Mother . " That puts her in rarefied company.

>

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>

> A New Ministry

> If this brings You glory — if souls are brought to you — with

> joy I accept all to the end of my life.

> — to Jesus, undated

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>

> But for most people, 's ranking among Catholic saints may be

less

> important than a more general implication of Come Be My Light: that

if

> she could carry on for a half-century without God in her head or

heart,

> then perhaps people not quite as saintly can cope with less extreme

> versions of the same problem. One powerful instance of this may have

> occurred very early on. In 1968, British writer-turned-filmmaker

Malcolm

> Muggeridge visited . Muggeridge had been an outspoken

agnostic,

> but by the time he arrived with a film crew in Calcutta he was in

full

> spiritual-search mode. Beyond impressing him with her work and her

> holiness, she wrote a letter to him in 1970 that addressed his

doubts

> full-bore. " Your longing for God is so deep and yet He keeps Himself

> away from you, " she wrote. " He must be forcing Himself to do so —

> because he loves you so much — the personal love Christ has for you

> is infinite — The Small difficulty you have re His Church is finite

> — Overcome the finite with the infinite. " Muggeridge apparently did.

> He became an outspoken Christian apologist and converted to

Catholicism

> in 1982. His 1969 film, Something Beautiful for God, supported by a

1971

> book of the same title, made an international sensation.

> At the time, Muggeridge was something of a unique case. A child of

> privilege who became a minor celebrity, he was hardly 's

target

> audience. Now, with the publication of Come Be My Light, we can all

play

> Muggeridge. Kolodiejchuk thinks the book may act as an antidote to a

> cultural problem. " The tendency in our spiritual life but also in

our

> more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that

is

> going on, " he says. " And so to us the totality of love is what we

feel.

> But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and

> vulnerability. Mother wasn't 'feeling' Christ's love, and she

> could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for

Jesus,

> and still writing to him, 'Your happiness is all I want.' That's a

> powerful example even if you are not talking in exclusively

religious

> terms. "

> America's wants to talk precisely in religious

terms. " Everything

> she's experiencing, " he says, " is what average believers experience

in

> their spiritual lives writ large. I have known scores of people who

have

> felt abandoned by God and had doubts about God's existence. And this

> book expresses that in such a stunning way but shows her full of

> complete trust at the same time. " He takes a breath. " Who would have

> thought that the person who was considered the most faithful woman

in

> the world struggled like that with her faith? " he asks. " And who

would

> have thought that the one thought to be the most ardent of believers

> could be a saint to the skeptics? " has long used as an

> example to parishioners of self-emptying love. Now, he says, he

will use

> her extraordinary faith in the face of overwhelming silence to

> illustrate how doubt is a natural part of everyone's life, be it an

> average believer's or a world-famous saint's.

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>

> Into the Light of Day

> Please destroy any letters or anything I have written.

> — to Picachy, April 1959

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>

> Consistent with her ongoing fight against pride, 's rationale

for

> suppressing her personal correspondence was " I want the work to

remain

> only His. " If the letters became public, she explained to Picachy,

> " people will think more of me — less of Jesus. "

> The particularly holy are no less prone than the rest of us to

misjudge

> the workings of history — or, if you will, of God's providence.

> considered the perceived absence of God in her life as her

most

> shameful secret but eventually learned that it could be seen as a

gift

> abetting her calling. If her worries about publicizing it also turn

out

> to be misplaced — if a book of hasty, troubled notes turns out to

> ease the spiritual road of thousands of fellow believers, there

would be

> no shame in having been wrong — but happily, even wonderfully wrong

> — twice.

>

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>

>

> Love~All~Ways

> *~Karma*

>

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