Monday, December 31, 2007 at 2:02am
Our distorted view of Mother Teresa
Column: God Said What?
This column originally was published on Sept. 7, 2007.
There's a saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
As I remember it, it deals with holding off your talking until you've done the walking. Because it's easy to be judgmental of someone whom you don't really know. And it's even easier to feel that way when you've never had any experience that can approximate what they lived.
If you haven't guessed, that's a long way of me saying that we should all check ourselves for our shock at Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles.
After all, this is nothing new. Jesus himself warned his disciples that they would have trouble in this world. And Jesus was the one who is portrayed in Mark's gospel as crying out from the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
As we see in Mother Teresa's struggles, if you genuinely try to follow the God of Jesus Christ, it's going to be hard. This is why St. John of the Cross had his "Dark Night of the Soul" and theologian Karl Rahner spoke of "Encounters with Silence." That's not to mention the absence of God in the early chapters of Exodus and in some of the Psalms. And in more contemporary times, the poor and oppressed of our world deal with this every day. They are forced to reckon with what liberation theologians call the "non-meaning" of human existence due to the position that the rest of society has given them.
That's why Mother Teresa's struggles shouldn't surprise us. She was an admirable disciple of Jesus whom we should look to emulate. And hopefully the Church will venerate her as a saint one day. But she was still human. And it's that humanity that we're now trying to take away by putting her up on a divine pedestal.
You see, we wanted Mother Teresa to be a saint in the way we expected. And we expected her to be meek, saintly, loving and make us feel better about the world from a distance. We didn't want her to challenge us too much about the way that each of us lives our life. And we didn't want her causing a stink about the societal causes of poverty.
We weren't concerned about the poor like she was. But we liked Mother Teresa because she made us feel good about ourselves. We could watch her from a safe distance and sanitize her life and work. And that's how we took away her humanity.
The great woman had decades of spiritual struggles. Well, who wouldn't? How many of us can really imagine the spiritual, emotional and physical toll of ministering to the poorest of the poor in a place far away from home? How many of us would sacrifice what she did, allow ourselves to be put on the world stage for it and not have some serious reservations about the whole thing? Did we spectators really think that her life was all gumdrops and teddy bears?
If it truly doesn't make sense that Mother Teresa had painful struggles, then perhaps we'd better give ourselves a thorough look in the mirror. Because sustaining a ministry of divine love and healing among the poor is hard. These are the people that the rest of society has deemed expendable and non-persons, so advocating for them and modeling sacrificial love for everyone else isn't a walk in the park.
It's God's work. And God's work is often messy, difficult and painful. But it is necessary work, and it is a true calling to attempt to walk down that path. It is no less than walking in Christ's footsteps.
We thought we knew Mother Teresa. And we were partially wrong. We only saw what we wanted to. Just like with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day. We place these great women and men up on pedestals. And in doing so, we take away their humanity and make them myths. We distance ourselves from them so we don't feel responsible for walking down a similar path. We take away their flaws and struggles to make it impossible to hear them calling us to walk in their footsteps.
So let's put a moratorium on our shock and disbelief. Because we haven't walked a mile in her shoes. And the hard truth is that few of us really ever wanted to.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine.
There's a saying about walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
As I remember it, it deals with holding off your talking until you've done the walking. Because it's easy to be judgmental of someone whom you don't really know. And it's even easier to feel that way when you've never had any experience that can approximate what they lived.
If you haven't guessed, that's a long way of me saying that we should all check ourselves for our shock at Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles.
After all, this is nothing new. Jesus himself warned his disciples that they would have trouble in this world. And Jesus was the one who is portrayed in Mark's gospel as crying out from the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
As we see in Mother Teresa's struggles, if you genuinely try to follow the God of Jesus Christ, it's going to be hard. This is why St. John of the Cross had his "Dark Night of the Soul" and theologian Karl Rahner spoke of "Encounters with Silence." That's not to mention the absence of God in the early chapters of Exodus and in some of the Psalms. And in more contemporary times, the poor and oppressed of our world deal with this every day. They are forced to reckon with what liberation theologians call the "non-meaning" of human existence due to the position that the rest of society has given them.
That's why Mother Teresa's struggles shouldn't surprise us. She was an admirable disciple of Jesus whom we should look to emulate. And hopefully the Church will venerate her as a saint one day. But she was still human. And it's that humanity that we're now trying to take away by putting her up on a divine pedestal.
You see, we wanted Mother Teresa to be a saint in the way we expected. And we expected her to be meek, saintly, loving and make us feel better about the world from a distance. We didn't want her to challenge us too much about the way that each of us lives our life. And we didn't want her causing a stink about the societal causes of poverty.
We weren't concerned about the poor like she was. But we liked Mother Teresa because she made us feel good about ourselves. We could watch her from a safe distance and sanitize her life and work. And that's how we took away her humanity.
The great woman had decades of spiritual struggles. Well, who wouldn't? How many of us can really imagine the spiritual, emotional and physical toll of ministering to the poorest of the poor in a place far away from home? How many of us would sacrifice what she did, allow ourselves to be put on the world stage for it and not have some serious reservations about the whole thing? Did we spectators really think that her life was all gumdrops and teddy bears?
If it truly doesn't make sense that Mother Teresa had painful struggles, then perhaps we'd better give ourselves a thorough look in the mirror. Because sustaining a ministry of divine love and healing among the poor is hard. These are the people that the rest of society has deemed expendable and non-persons, so advocating for them and modeling sacrificial love for everyone else isn't a walk in the park.
It's God's work. And God's work is often messy, difficult and painful. But it is necessary work, and it is a true calling to attempt to walk down that path. It is no less than walking in Christ's footsteps.
We thought we knew Mother Teresa. And we were partially wrong. We only saw what we wanted to. Just like with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day. We place these great women and men up on pedestals. And in doing so, we take away their humanity and make them myths. We distance ourselves from them so we don't feel responsible for walking down a similar path. We take away their flaws and struggles to make it impossible to hear them calling us to walk in their footsteps.
So let's put a moratorium on our shock and disbelief. Because we haven't walked a mile in her shoes. And the hard truth is that few of us really ever wanted to.
— — —
Kevin Considine is a graduate student at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Recently he was married to a most wonderful woman who keeps him in line and reads his columns to see if they make sense. He and his wife live on the South Side of Chicago. He welcomes comments, feedback or fits of anger and can be reached at {email considkp@yahoo.com}considkp@yahoo.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kevin Considine.