A saint, who worked for the good of others despite her own struggles.

A saint, who worked for the good of others despite  her own struggles.
*****    *****   *****      *******

Mother Teresa was elevated to sainthood by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016.

She is now known to the faithful as St. Teresa of Calcutta.

 We know Mother Teresa only as the very embodiment of Christian charity.

Many of us don’t know how she was suffering interiorly while she was helping others.

The always smiling Mother who dedicated her whole life for the care of the suffering children of God had suffered a decades-long depression and a dark night of the soul.

God allows this kind of depression only to His very dear ones who have the spiritual strength, which also He Himself gives, to bear the suffering for His love and glory.

  A pious and dedicated soul meets with times of exhaustion, doubt, and, most of all, loneliness.

While Mother Teresa worked amidst heart-breaking poverty, she found her own heart beaten down by interior struggles of doubt, pain, loneliness, and anxiety.

“I am told God lives in me,” she wrote to her spiritual director in 1957, “and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

  Mother Teresa is not the first Catholic saint or spiritual model who has had to endure such intense struggles.

 St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Thérèse of Lisieux,  would certainly find a friend in the small nun who struggled as she showed kindness to those who needed it the most.

  The holy men and women   were not held back from their good work by an inner darkness; rather, they were able to touch the hearts of countless people because of it.

“If my separation from you brings others to you,” Mother Teresa wrote in her spiritual canticle to God, “I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer.”

She transformed her inner turmoil into compassion and love for anyone else who is also suffering.

In this way, those who have suffered in their own interior and spiritual lives may find the motivation to care for those suffering in their midst in a more effective and loving way.

Those who suffer from their own dark nights of the soul often feel as if they are doing something wrong—as if their faith were somehow weak because of these interior struggles.

But in fact they are strong in their faith.

Mother Teresa is an example to the countless souls who pursue a spiritual life of charity but are frustrated by feelings of doubt, loneliness, and depression.

We learn from her how to work for the good of others despite,  or, because of, our own struggles.

Lourdu Selvam