Lumbley Library Weighs In On Mother Teresa- Part One

Wasted Lives

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36
I was reminded of this verse recently when the world paused to remember the death of the ‘King of Rock & Roll’ Elvis Presley. Well, maybe it wasn’t the whole world. I’m pretty sure there are at least a billion people in China who never gave Elvis’ death a moment’s thought. But for those of us in the good old USA who think the world revolves around us it was almost like a day of mourning, or at least a national holiday.

I wasn’t a big Elvis fan growing up but just like every one else I remember where I was when the announcement was made that the ‘King’ was dead. My first thought was, “must have been drug related”. But soon thereafter, even though I was not serving the Lord at that time, I began to think of Mark 8:36 – What profit is there in gaining the whole world? Where is the value in all that fame, money, and worldly honors? Here was a man that had everything the world says is important and yet he came to his end alone, sitting on a toilet, fat and drug addicted at the age of 42.

Unfortunately these kinds of wasted lives are all too common in our celebrity crazed culture. But there is another kind of wasted life that, on the surface isn’t quite as obvious. It is a life seen by the world as being given totally to the service of mankind. The life of a humanitarian or religious figure can be just as wasted as that of the celebrity hedonist.

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

Almost everyone in the world would agree that Mother Teresa was a living saint. She gave her life in service to the least of those among us. She took a vow of poverty in order to identify with the poorest of the poor. She forsook all the comforts of modern life in order to minister as a woman of faith in the poorest slums of India and around the world. Surely this woman was sent by God. Surely this woman who was so selfless in her life is now occupying an honored place in God’s eternal kingdom.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Mat 7:22-23 Now we find out that all we thought we knew about Mother Teresa may not be so. In a Time magazine feature story we discover that Teresa herself never had any assurance of her place in God’s kingdom. In letters heretofore unpublished, Mother Teresa confides her lack of faith in a spiritual confidant and mentor, Father Michael van der Peet.

These revelations have already been seized upon by atheists and skeptics eager to prove that all religious thought is merely the imaginative speculations of the human mind. Some in the religious community have attempteed to prove just the opposite, that despite her inability to ‘feel the presence of God’ she was still a grand example of faith.

The real truth from all this should come as no surprise to any true bible believing Christian. Mother Teresa did not feel the presence of God because she was an idolater. She practiced an empty form of religious ritual based on the vain traditions of men rather than the truth of Gods word. She had a form of Godliness that had no real power to save, heal or deliver from sin.

“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.”
Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations, and Prayers, pp. 81-82 I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic” Mother Teresa — A Simple Path p 31Mother Teresa was a Catholic through and through. She worshipped Mary as the mother of God and co-redeemer with Christ.

Mary … is our patroness and our Mother, and she is always leading us to Jesus.”
Mother Teresa speech at the Worldwide retreat for Priests – Oct 1984

Brother Steve will conclude this series on Labor Day.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Catholic Transubstantiation Is A Wafer Thin Heresy
• “i have come to love the darkness”
• Feelings Aside
• To my faithful and victorious brothers…