Blackbird singing in the dead of night…

The pain within is so great…
Please ask Our Lady to be my Mother in this darkness.
The place of God in my soul is blank—There is no God in me.
In the darkness…Lord, my God,
who am I that You should forsake me?
The one You have thrown away as unwanted—unloved.
I call, I cling,
I want—and there is no One to answer—no One on
Whom I can cling; no, No One. Alone.
The darkness is so dark—and I am alone.
Before I used to get such help & consolation from spiritual direction—
from the time the work has started—
nothing.
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. – St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

These words were written by Mother Teresa, expressing the great trial she underwent for several decades after she began her work of serving the “poorest of the poor.” These trials were a dark night of faith, of feeling abandoned by God. And yet, see her life.

What I find so extraordinary and inspiring is Mother Teresa’s honesty in her personal correspondence with her spiritual directors, and that she came, over time and with much struggle, to accept these trials in surrender to Christ on the cross; and she did not live aspiring beyond this trial by looking for an easy ‘fix.’

After years of struggle trying to understand it, she eventually came to discern and embrace this darkness as the cost of her mission to live in solidarity with the destitute. Destitute who, beyond all choice, lived in that same darkness. This insight gave her great peace.

From within that emptied out space her trial carved out, Mother chose to trust and to love.

That is a difficult pill to swallow in our American culture that sees suffering and struggle as the only real problem, and one that must always be eliminated. St. Paul need not apply:

Therefore I am content with weaknesses,
insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities
for the sake of Christ;
for whenever I am weak,
then I am strong. — 2 Cor. 12:10

Even beyond the grave, Mother testified she was ready to continue ‘absent from heaven’ for the sake of loving those who sense themselves ‘absent from heaven,’ abandoned.

O God, take these broken wings of mine and teach me to fly with them. St. Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.