Zenit Catholic news agency is publishing info. from Mother Teresa's private letters, things being discovered as her Beatification process unfolds. Read and be inspired!

The Soul of Mother Teresa, Part 1 Hidden Aspects of Her Interior Life

ROME, NOV. 28, 2002 (Zenit.org).- As the process of beatification for Mother Teresa progresses, ZENIT is publishing in two installments, today and Friday, the first part of a study by the postulator of the cause, Missionary of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk. The article is reprinted with his permission.

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The Soul of Mother Teresa: Hidden Aspects of her Interior Life (Part 1)

copyright by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. Postulator

All rights reserved.

Love [Jesus] generously. Love Him trustfully without looking back, without fear. Give yourself fully to Jesus. ... Desire to love much and love the love that is not loved. -- Mother Teresa, 2 June 1962

When Mother Teresa died at the age of eighty-seven, she was greatly admired for her generous love of God and dedicated service to the poor throughout the world. Yet because she resolutely revealed so little about what transpired within her, one could only surmise the intensity of her love for God and souls. Now, thanks to discoveries made during the process for her beatification and canonization, we are given a new and privileged view into Mother Teresa's soul, into that mystical communion with God that formed her life, teaching, and works of charity.

Perhaps the most significant and inspiring of these "secrets" of her heart are three remarkable aspects of her relationship with Jesus. The first concerns an extraordinary private vow that Mother Teresa made in 1942. The second pertains to the source of Mother Teresa's inspiration to serve the poorest of the poor. The third centers on her striking experience of interior darkness that settled upon her as she began her work among the poor of Calcutta. These three phenomena, especially when seen in relation to each other, lead us to a greater appreciation of the depth of Mother Teresa's holiness and the relevance of her example and message for our time.

The first part of this essay will present the vow of 1942 and the call of 1946; a second article will discuss the long period of interior darkness.

1. The Vow of 1942 -- "Something very beautiful" for Jesus

Mother Teresa was, above all, a woman in love with God. She seems to have fallen in love with Him at an early age and to have progressed in this love without serious hindrances. Her upbringing was marked by a thorough training in the Catholic faith and a serious spiritual life. In a number of personal letters, she discloses that Jesus was the first and only one to captivate her heart: "From childhood the Heart of Jesus has been my first love."1 Along with this early intimacy with Jesus, Mother Teresa had received a special grace at the time of her First Communion: "From the age of 51/2 years, when first I received Him, the love for souls has been within. It grew with the years."

Indeed, Mother Teresa's love for Jesus and neighbor so increased that at the age of eighteen she left her family and homeland to answer Jesus' call to a missionary life in India as a Loreto nun.2 Eight years later, she made her final commitment to Christ as a religious. Six months after her perpetual profession of vows, she was still in awe at the intense joy that had marked the event. "If you would know how happy I was," she wrote home to her spiritual father in Skopje, Fr. Jambrekovic, S.J. "Of my free will I could have set on fire my own holocaust [i.e., sacrificial offering]. ... I want to be only all for Jesus ... I would give everything for Him even life itself."

Mother Teresa's life as a Loreto nun was characterized as a time of intense and generous love of God. As she wrote some years later, "In these 18 years I have tried to live up to His desires. I have been burning with longing to love Him as He has never been loved before."

As an expression of this daring desire, in 1942 at the age of thirty-six, Mother Teresa made a magnanimous private vow to God. As she later explained it, she "wanted to give Jesus something very beautiful," "something without reserve." Thus towards the end of her annual retreat that year, with the permission of her spiritual director, she bound herself "to give to God anything that He may ask - 'not to refuse Him anything.'"

This exceptional vow was rooted in the delicacy of a great love and deeply felt need to give herself completely to God. As the spiritual theologian, Jordan Aumann, O.P., spells out, "Love unites the will of the lover to the will of the beloved, and perfect abandonment requires the complete surrender of our own will to that of God. ... [Such] abandonment to the will of God is found only in souls that are far advanced in perfection."3. Hans Urs von Balthasar's observation that love expresses itself in the form of a vow sheds light on Mother Teresa's act of love made during her retreat: "Perfect love consists in the unconditional surrender of self ... The content of every genuine love is expressed in this act of self-surrender that places at God's disposal and surrenders to him all one possesses as a votive offering in the inner form of a vow."4 Years later Mother Teresa expressed the ideal she had lived for so many years in an instruction to her Sisters: "True love is surrender. Submission for someone who is in love is more than a duty, it is a blessedness. Only total surrender can satisfy the burning desire of a true Missionary of Charity."

The permission of Mother Teresa's spiritual director confirms that this vow was not based on mere whim nor aimed at a dangerous or impossible ideal. Rather, the grace moving Mother Teresa to make this vow presupposed a complete trust in God and an already well-established habit of seeking to do the most pleasing to Him.

For seventeen years the vow remained a personal though powerful secret that Mother Teresa shared only with her spiritual director. Animating all her activity during those years was her desire to love God wholeheartedly by doing His will in all things. Not until April 1959, on the eighth day of a retreat made with Fr. L. Picachy, S.J., did she write of the vow and its effect on her: "This is what hides everything in me."

Some time later, when the Archbishop of Calcutta, Ferdinand Périer, S.J., seemed to think that she was acting too hurriedly in opening a new foundation, Mother Teresa felt the need to disclose to him the real reason behind the haste that characterized all her undertakings. In her letter of 1 September 1959 she tells him of her vow and how love moves her to respond immediately: "For these 17 years I have tried [to be faithful to that vow] and this is the reason why I want to act at once."

The vow, as will be seen in Part Two of this essay, also proved to be a source of strength during the long years of her painful spiritual trial. As she wrote to her spiritual director, Fr. Joseph Neuner, S.J., in the spring of 1960, "Since then [1942] I have kept this promise, and sometimes when the darkness is very dark and I am on the verge of saying 'No' to God the thought of that promise pulls me up."

Mother Teresa regarded her vow of 1942 as a sacred bond uniting her with her Divine Spouse. Jesus, for His part, took Mother Teresa at her word. Several years later in 1946, in a series of interior locutions and visions, He asked her to found a new religious community totally dedicated to service of the poorest of the poor. In His words to Mother Teresa, Jesus alludes to her vow: "You have become my spouse for My love. Will you refuse to do this for me? Refuse Me not."

This call of Jesus is the second "secret" of Mother Teresa.

2. Mother Teresa's "Inspiration" Mother Teresa in Calcutta

From the time of her first profession of vows in May 1931, Mother Teresa was assigned to the Entally community of the Loreto nuns in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary's Bengali Medium School for girls. The school was attached to the convent and welcomed orphans and poorer children, both day students and boarders. Among other responsibilities the zealous young religious took charge of another Loreto school, St. Teresa's Primary Bengali Medium School, located on Lower Circular Road. The daily excursion through the city gave her the opportunity to observe the want and suffering of the poor. In May 1937, after Mother Teresa made her final profession as a Loreto nun, she continued at St. Mary's, teaching catechism and geography. In 1944 she became Principal of the School.

In the classroom, Mother Teresa was more than just a presence. She was concerned to share her supernatural vision of life with her students and to lead them to a deeper faith. she also had the opportunity to serve the poor in clinics run by the Loreto Sisters. These encounters made a deep impression on her. Though she was unaware of it, all this proved to be the providential environment in which God was preparing her for her future mission. Throughout her years in Loreto, Mother Teresa was noted for her charity, generosity, and courage; her capacity for hard work; a natural talent for organization; and a joyous spirit. She was a prayerful, faithful and fervent religious. Even though her private vow made in 1942 was unknown to anyone, her love and generosity were evident to all. The Sisters of her community, as well as the pupils and the boarders of St. Mary's, loved and admired her.

THE CALL

Mother Teresa left the Loreto convent in Entally, Calcutta on the evening of Monday, 9 September 1946 for a holiday and eight day retreat in Darjeeling. Sometime the next day, while on the train,5 Mother Teresa heard for the first time the voice of Jesus by interior locution. Over the course of the next months, by means of further interior locutions and several interior visions,6 Jesus asked her to establish a religious community that would be dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor and, as Mother Teresa phrased it, "satiate His thirst for love and for souls." This experience on the train was a turning point in Mother Teresa's life; she always referred to it as a "call within a call." September 10 came to be celebrated among the Missionaries of Charity as "Inspiration Day."

From 1946 until her death, Mother Teresa resolutely refused to give any details about the inspiration to begin the Missionaries of Charity or about the process of discernment that led to the official establishment of the new institute on 7 October 1950. Mother Teresa's silence reflected her reverence for the sacredness of the gift she received in the depths of her soul. As she wrote to her Sisters in 1993, "For me Jesus' thirst is something so intimate so I have felt shy until now to speak to you of September 10th. I wanted to do as Our Lady who 'kept all these things in her heart.'" In fact, prompted by profound humility, Mother Teresa insistently wanted these documents to be destroyed. As she explained to Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J. in a letter of 30 March 1957, "I want the work to remain only His. When the beginning will be known people will think more of me, less of Jesus." However, Archbishop Périer did not heed Mother Teresa's request. These documents were among those collected for her Cause of Beatification and Canonization. From them abundant light is now shed on the history of the founding of the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa's reaction

After completing her retreat Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta and resumed her duties as headmistress and teacher at St. Mary's School. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she related to Fr. Celeste Van Exem, S.J., her spiritual director, everything that had happened on the train and during the retreat and "showed him the few notes I had written during the retreat." During the following weeks, Fr. Van Exem attempted to discern the genuineness of the inspiration Mother Teresa had received. She, meanwhile, "kept on telling him whatever passed in my soul, in thoughts and desires," while he instructed her "to pray and remain silent over it." When she wrote a letter to her Superior General in January 1948, Mother Teresa related that after she had informed Fr. Van Exem of her experience he "put me off. Though he saw it was from God, still he forbade me to even think about it. Often, very often during the four months I asked him to let me speak to His Grace, but each time he refused..." It was not until January of 1947 that Fr. Van Exem, now fully convinced that Mother Teresa's experience was "from God and from the Immaculate Heart of Mary," allowed her to inform the Archbishop of her inspiration.

The letter of 13 January 1947

Mother Teresa disclosed the call to Archbishop Périer in a letter dated 13 January 1947. She begins by telling him she is writing with the permission of Fr. Van Exem and declares "that at one word that Your Grace would say I am ready never to consider again any of those strange thoughts which have been coming continually." This letter to Archbishop Périer provides a synopsis of the inspiration received from Jesus, "what went on between Him and me during the days of much prayer." The letter follows in its entirety:

+ St. Mary's Convent 13th Jan. 47

Your Grace,7

From last September strange thoughts and desires have been filling my heart. They got stronger and clearer during the 8 days retreat I made in Darjeeling. On coming here I told Fr. Van Exem everything. I showed him the few notes I had written during the retreat. He told me he thought it was God's inspiration but to pray and remain silent over it. I kept on telling him whatever passed in my soul in thoughts and desires. Then yesterday he wrote this, "I cannot prevent you from talking or writing to His Grace. You will write to His Grace as a daughter to her father, in perfect trust and sincerity, without any fear or anxiety, telling him how it all went, adding that you talked to me and that now I think I cannot in conscience prevent you from exposing everything to him."

Before I begin I want to tell you that at one word that Your Grace would say I am ready never to consider again any of those strange thoughts which have been coming continually.

During the year very often I have been longing to be all for Jesus and to make other souls, especially Indian, come and love Him fervently, to identify myself with Indian girls completely and so love Him as He has never been loved before. I thought [this] was one of my many mad desires. I read the life of St. M. Cabrini. She did so much for the Americans because she became one of them. Why can't I do in India what she did for America? She did not wait for souls to come to her. She went to them with her zealous workers. Why can't I do the same for Him here? There are so many souls -- pure, holy -- who are longing to give themselves only to God. European orders are too rich for them; they get more than they give.

"Wouldst Thou not help."8 How can I? I have been and am very happy as a Loreto Nun. To leave that what I love and expose myself to new labours and sufferings which will be great, to be the laughing stock of so many, especially religious, to cling and choose deliberately the hard things of an Indian life, to loneliness and ignominy, to uncertainty - and all because Jesus wants it, because something is calling me to leave all and gather the few to live His life, to do His work in India. These thoughts were a cause of much suffering, but the voice kept on saying, "Wilt Thou refuse?"

One day at Holy Communion I heard the same voice very distinctly: "I want Indian nuns, victims of my love, who would be Mary and Martha, who would be so very united to me as to radiate my love on souls. I want free nuns covered with my poverty of the Cross. I want obedient nuns covered with my obedience of the Cross. I want full of love nuns covered with the charity of the Cross. Wilt thou refuse to do this for me?"

On another day: "You have become my Spouse for my Love. You have come to India for Me. The thirst you had for souls brought you so far. Are you afraid to take one more step for your Spouse, for me, for souls? Is your generosity grown cold? Am I a second to you? You did not die for souls. That is why you don't care what happens to them. Your heart was never drowned in sorrow as it was My Mother's. We both gave our all for souls and you? You are afraid that you will lose your vocation, you will become secular, you will be wanting in perseverance. Nay -- your vocation is to love and suffer and save souls and by taking this step you will fulfil my Heart's desire for you. That is your vocation. You will dress in simple Indian clothes or rather like My Mother dressed, simple and poor. Your present habit is holy because it is my symbol -- your sari will become holy because it will be my symbol."

I tried to persuade Our Lord that I would try to become a very fervent holy Loreto Nun, a real Victim here in this vocation -- but the answer came very clear again. "I want Indian Missionary Sisters of Charity, who would be My fire of love amongst the very poor -- the sick, the dying, the little street children. The poor I want you to bring to me and the sisters that would offer their lives as victims of my love would bring these souls to Me. You are, I know, the most incapable person, weak and sinful, but just because you are that, I want to use you for my Glory! Wilt Thou refuse!"

These words, or rather, this voice frightened me. The thought of eating, sleeping, living like the Indians filled me with fear. I prayed long -- I prayed so much -- I asked Our Mother Mary to ask Jesus to remove all this from me. The more I prayed, the clearer grew the voice in my heart and so I prayed that He would do with me whatever He wanted. He asked again and again.

Then once more the voice was very clear: "You have been always saying, 'Do with me whatever you wish.' Now I want to act. Let me do it, My little Spouse, My own little one. Do not fear. I shall be with you always. You will suffer and you suffer now, but if you are my own little Spouse, the Spouse of the Crucified Jesus, you will have to bear these torments on your heart. Let me act. Refuse me not. Trust me lovingly, trust me blindly."

"Little one, give me souls. Give me the souls of the poor little street children. How it hurts, if you only knew, to see these poor children soiled with sin. I long for the purity of their love. If you would only answer my call and bring me these souls. Draw them away from the hands of the evil one. If you only knew how many little ones fall into sin every day. There are convents with [a] number of nuns caring for the rich and able to do people, but for my very poor there is absolutely none. For them I long, them I love. Wilt Thou refuse?"

"Ask His Grace to give me this in thanksgiving of the twenty-five years of Grace I have given him."9

This is what went on between Him and me during the days of much prayer.10 Now the whole thing stands clear before my eyes as follows:

"The Call"

To be an Indian: to live with them, like them, so as to get at the people's heart. The order would start outside Calcutta -- Cossipore -- open, lonely place -- or St. John's Sealdah where the Sisters could have a real contemplative life in their novitiate, where they would complete one full year of true interior life and one in action. The Sisters are to cling to perfect poverty -- Poverty of the Cross -- nothing but God. So as not to have riches enter their heart, they would have nothing of the outside but they will keep up themselves with the labour of their hands -- Franciscan poverty, Benedict's labour.

In the order girls of any nationality should be taken but they must become Indian-minded, dress in simple clothes: a long, white, long-sleeved habit, light blue sari and a white veil, sandals, no stockings, a crucifix, girdle and rosary.

The Sisters should get a very full knowledge of the interior life from holy priests who would help them to become so united to God so as to radiate Him when they join the mission field. They should become true Victims -- no words -- but in every sense of the word, Indian victims for India. Love should be the word, the fire, that will make them live the life to its full. If the nuns are very poor they will be free to love only God, to serve Him only, to be only His. The two years in perfect solitude should make them think of the interior while they will be in the midst of the exterior.

So as to renew and keep up the spirit, the sisters should spend one day in every week in the house, the Mother house of the city when they are in the mission.

"The Work"

The Sisters' work would be to go to the people -- no boarding schools, but plenty of schools, free, up to class two only. In each parish, two Sisters would go -- one for the sick and the dying, one for the school. If the number requires, the pairs can increase. The Sisters would teach the little ones, help them have pure recreations and so keep them from the street and sin. The school should be only in the very poor places of the parish to get the children from the streets, to keep them for the poor parents who have to work. The one who will take care of the sick, she will assist the dying, do all the work for the sick, just as much if not more [than] what a person gets in a hospital, wash them and prepare the place for His coming. At the appointed time the Sisters will all meet at the same place from the different parishes and go home, where they would have the complete separation from the world. This in the cities where the number of the poor is great. In the villages, the same thing, only there they could leave the said village once their work of instruction and service ends.

To move about with great ease and fast, each nun should learn how to ride a bicycle, some how to drive a bus. This is a little too up to date, but souls are dying for want of care, for want of love. These Sisters, these true victims, should do the work that is wanting in Christ's Apostolate in India. They should also have a hospital for little children with bad diseases. The nuns of this order will be Missionaries of Charity or Missionary Sisters of Charity.

God is calling me, unworthy and sinful that I am. I am longing to give all for souls. They will all think me mad, after so many years, to begin a thing which will bring me for the most part only suffering but He calls me also to join the few to start the work, to fight the devil and deprive him of the thousand little souls who he is destroying every day.

This is rather long, but I have told you everything as I would have told my mother. I long to be really only His, to burn myself completely for Him and souls. I want Him to be loved tenderly by many. So if you think, if you wish - I am ready to do His Will. Count not my feelings. Count not the cost I would have to pay. I am ready for I have already given my all to Him. And if you think all this a deception, that too I would accept and sacrifice myself completely. I am sending this through Fr. Van Exem. I have given him full permission to use anything I have told him which is in connection with me and Him in this work. My change to Asansol11 seems to me a part of His plan. There I will have more time to pray and prepare myself for His coming. In this matter I leave myself completely in your hands.

Pray for me that I would become a religious according to His heart.

Your devoted child in Jesus Christ, Mary Teresa

Evidently, a desire to do something for the poor was stirring in Mother Teresa's heart before 10 September. Light and conviction came when Jesus intervened powerfully to make His desires known. But if until now it appeared that on "Inspiration Day" Jesus asked Mother Teresa to take on a new mission and that she simply accepted His proposal, only waiting for the Church's permission to begin, we have just seen that this was not the case. In fact, Mother Teresa experienced a real interior struggle between the love inspiring her determination to give God everything He was asking and the fears and doubts arising from her sense of her own unworthiness and weakness.

Yet, by the time she wrote to Archbishop Périer, she was ready to "burn herself completely" so that Jesus could be known and loved through her service to the poor. It is also evident, as can be ascertained by the clarity and concreteness of the sections on "The Call" and "The Work," that by January Mother Teresa had already given a good deal of thought to the life and work of the religious community she hoped to begin. What stands out is her emphasis on a deep spiritual life as the foundation of active service and her marked spirit of innovation.12

[Continued in Friday's ZENIT]

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1 Unless otherwise noted, quotations are taken from letters of Mother M. Teresa, M.C., and Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J.

2 Mother Teresa joined the Irish Branch of the Loreto Nuns whose formal name is the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

-- Theresa (Rodntee4Jesus@aol.com), November 29, 2002

Answers

blessings!

-- Theresa (Rodntee4Jesus@aol.com), November 29, 2002.

Dear Theresa,

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Mother Teresa and her sisters keep coming into my path lately. I don't know why.

I guess I will find out at some point. Pray that I keep my eyes, ears and heart open to God's plan for my life.

Love, MaryLu

-- MaryLu (mlc327@juno.com), November 29, 2002.

Hi MaryLu, are you married? Just wondering. The Carmelites always always have apealed to me, me eyes just attract to them when I see their brown robes go by. I had a strong unction to be a nun when I was 14, but was discouraged. I was told to experience the world first, and boy did I take 'em up on that. I'm wonderfully married to a Catholic Christian man but the Lord still puts very prayerful Carmelite nuns in my path.

Oh well, lets keep each other in prayer about hearing His will.

-- Theresa (Rodntee4Jesus@aol.com), November 29, 2002.

Hi Ladies, sidetrack as usual. As a spotty 13 year old at a secular state boarding school I used to have to go to Mass by myself every Sunday. Luckily the Sisters of Mercy run a hospital just across the road from the hostel and I was able to get to Mass easily.

A beautiful old chapel, me and 20-30 Nuns! I was spoilt rotten by them, and they fascinated me...REAL NUNS! Having grown up in a generation without NUns I found them enthralling. There was a bit of saddness looking at the photos of the huge numbers of Nuns from days gone by and their aging group, but they were philosophical and had great faith. The overwhelming memory is the warmth they really radiaited, the joy for life they had, the smiles, the humor, the love they held. Both for one another and others. Its was something Im glad I got to experience for that year.After mass together with the Priest I would go and have breakfast with them all . They used to fuss over me, poor Catholic boy in a non catholic school- and without his mother! I loved it, and it certianly beat boarding school food.

Im rambling but God Bless all the NUns out there and may young women be open to the call.

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), November 29, 2002.

How cheesy and cliched am I? Well you get the idea, the Nuns were wonderful women. Blessings

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), November 30, 2002.

Kiwi--
I've come to admire your new persona very much. Never would've dreamed the Golem was a sweetheart of 30 nuns far back. You ought to try writing an autobiography; something spiritual.

The wonderful thing is, in this world are many, many Mother Teresas; only they're anonymous. One day soon you might look around in a library and find a book. The story of the Miraculous Medal, and the great nun who received visits from the Blessed Virgin, Saint Catherine Laboure. You will never read a book more beautiful. I wish I could remember the title of the one I once read, more than 25 years ago. Catherine Laboure wasn't like Mother Teresa; her life was spent as the porteress in a convent in Paris. She opened and closed the door for people who came knocking. Ha!!!

It's amazing to realise how God and Our Blessed Mother vary in finding these remarkable souls. You aren't cheesy at all, Kiwi. Cheeky, sometimes. That's OK!

-- eugene c. chavez (chavezec@pacbell.net), November 30, 2002.

Dear Theresa,

Yes, I am happily married for ______ years :) So, I do not think the nuns are coming into my path for that reason. I never had the desire to be a nun. I think Mother Teresa is sending her sisters into my path because God wants my 'hands' to serve Him in some way - not sure about that. I always preferred to do 'little' things for God like St. Theresa, the Little Flower - not one to do those big things for God. Maybe I am supposed to learn something from these gentle, holy women...we'll see.

When I go to Washington with them to see the sisters profess their vows, I will keep you and all on this forum in prayer that day.

Kiwi, what a charming story, although sad. I feel so bad that you had to go to church by yourself. You didn't have a mom, Kiwi? Our Lady is a mom to all of us.

MaryLu

-- MaryLu (mlc327@juno.com), December 01, 2002.

Hi Mary Lu yes I have a lovely mother!!!, but I was at boarding school for a year. I must visit the Nuns again, close to 14 years on, crickey time flies alright. God Bless

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), December 01, 2002.

Dear Kiwi,

So glad to hear you have a lovely mother! :) I misread your post, my friend.

MaryLu

-- MaryLu (mlc327@juno.com), December 01, 2002.

Thanks Theresa

The first part of the story was inspirational and uplifting. My father had schizophrenia but after visiting Mother Teresa the schizophrenia 'disappeared'. He was described as a 'favour' by the Vatican in regard to her impending beatification. Look forward to the second part. All for Jesus.

Michael

-- Michael (michael_safc@hotmail.com), December 06, 2002.