When G-d's Love Causes the Most Pain

[auparavant]

For Catholics: When G-d's Love Causes the Most Pain

Many before you have suffered the silence - that gut-wrenching darkness. He is there but you cannot feel Him. These sufferings are for a holy purpose.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1561247/Mother-Teresas-40-year-faith-crisis.html
Mother Teresa's '40-year faith crisis'

Mother Teresa, who is likely to be canonised, admitted that she had begun to doubt God .


By Malcolm Moore, Rome Correspondent

12:01AM BST 24 Aug 2007

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who may be canonised as a saint by the Vatican later this year, had a deep crisis of faith in God for the last 40 years of her life, according to a new set of her letters.

• Mother Teresa's crisis of faith won't prevent her canonisation, says Vatican

The correspondence, which spans most of Mother Teresa's life, shows that she felt alone and in a state of spiritual pain from around 1949, roughly the time when she started taking care of the poor and dying in Calcutta.

Although she publicly proclaimed that her heart belonged "entirely to the Heart of Jesus", she wrote to the Rev Michael Van Der Peet, a spiritual confidant, in September 1979 that "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and 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."

The letter was written just a few weeks before she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable work.

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More than 40 other letters, many of which she had asked to be destroyed in her will, show her fighting off feelings of "darkness" and "torture".
The letters are published for the first time in a new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, and are edited by the Rev Brian Kolodiejchuk, a close friend.
He wrote that during that period, Mother Teresa did not feel God "in her heart or in the eucharist".
Mr Kolodiejchuk gathered the letters as part of the process to make Mother Teresa a saint, and is responsible for arguing in her favour. He said the letters would show people another side of her life, and said that the fact that she was able to continue her work during such torment was a sign of her spiritual heroism. Mother Teresa has been beatified, and is awaiting canonisation.
The Vatican has insisted that the revelations will not obstruct her path to sainthood.
“Lord, my God, you have thrown [me] away as unwanted - unloved,” she wrote in one missive. “I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer, no, no one. Alone. Where is my faith? even deep down right in there is nothing. I have no faith. I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my heart.”
She added: “I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of the darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?”
She even compared her problems to hell and admitted that she had begun to doubt the existence of heaven and God.
"The smile," she wrote, "is a mask or a cloak that covers everything. I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God, a tender personal love. If you were there you would have said, 'What hypocrisy'."

 

[auparavant]

This is truly profound. It's not a testament that she didn't know Christ, she KNEW Him. What did Jesus say on the cross to the Father? "Eli Eli Sabachthani"? Right? "My G-d, My G-d, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?" If He suffered in this world being fully righteous, how much will we suffer for His sake?

There is a dark area of the christian walk that some go through where they have to rest on their actions of the faith, works...where they believe and go through the motions without the benefit of feeling all that lovey-dovey-ness from Jesus. They trust anyway...they obey anyway in their vocations in life. How sweet must their repose be in eternity!!!

John of the Cross ...Dark Night of the Soul...a must-read to comprehend this darkness. And Israel, in this moment of darkness...internal and external (enemies). It's profound. This post was inspired by Goddessmaker, a dear soul who is in this darkness and still fights for what she knows is His truth. She is a blessed soul!!!!

 

[ivyness]

Off to get the book.

 

[auparavant]

^^^I can't find the online link to send in... A friend in Mexico recommended it to me and I got busy and haven't read it yet. I've read some of the poetry in school studies and whatnot...but I aim to get it in Spanish and take my time to get all the symbolism. I'm sure he gave me a link and can't find it. If not, I'll try and get it from our religious bookstore.


Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross



Edit: I posted this in the wrong place..


I found it...had the wrong title lol. Sorry about that. It's that language thing in my head this morn. I'm not saying "darkness in the soul' as a spiritual problem, but that place where there's symbolic darkness and silence around you etc.


http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/dn.html

 

[auparavant]

I don't want to harp on those tele-evangelists who did bad things...goodness knows our priest problems....but I'm wondering if the Eddie Long's of the world got to that point and could not deal with it effectively and live through the torture and turned to something to dull that pain, that dark period.

 

[Belle Du Jour]

The thought of dark night of the soul scares me. . .but I know it's real.

 

[aribell]

This is so timely, as just today I was thinking about the significance of feelings of doubt and whether a struggle to believe is spiritual weakness or spiritual strength as one perseveres. I don't know if "doubt" is really the word--we may doubt ourselves, the reality of our faith; but to continue to reach out to God and expect an answer is faith.

Psalm 88[a]

A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil[c] of Heman the Ezrahite.

1 Lord, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.[d]
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief.

I call to you, Lord, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction[e]?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, Lord, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?

15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.

I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, and he will hear me.
2 In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
3 When I remember God, I moan;
when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah
4 You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
5 I consider the days of old,
the years long ago.
6 I said,[a] “Let me remember my song in the night;
let me meditate in my heart.”
Then my spirit made a diligent search:
7 “Will the Lord spurn forever,
and never again be favorable?
8 Has his steadfast love forever ceased?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” Selah
10 Then I said, “I will appeal to this,
to the years of the right hand of the Most High.”
11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
12 I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.
13 Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
14 You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples.

____________________________________

The Dark Night is real and scary, but perseverance is the key. It is in God that we have hope, and thankfully, not our own faith.

 

[ellebelle88]

Even when I'm praying, I feel like I'm doubting...which is not having faith. But I don't know how to control it. At the back of my mind I'm thinking, "What if God really doesn't exist and I'm doing all of this for nothing?"

 

[auparavant]

@nicola.kirwan


That right there!!! Doubt or silence? When you learn to ride a bike, you don't feel your parent's arms around you and think you're going to fall. It's shaky and you try and get scared but then the moment comes you keep going and then hear your parent's voice that you are riding on your own. He's there but there's this space around you so you will grow.

Doubt might not be the sin but could be the tet. I think that doubt with refusal is the sin, i.e. "giving up." There are many levels of growing in this walk and it now seems to me that some people reach that stage of dark silence when they are most capable of further growth toward more closeness with the Father. It's incredibly scary. Who wants to not feel His presence though He's still there? I will try and include various saints who endured this incredible test.

Psalm 77: 5-6

5 I consider the days of old,
the years long ago.
6 I said,[a] “Let me remember my song in the night;
let me meditate in my heart.”
Then my spirit made a diligent search:



Some might say that's it's personal sin that causes this. I disagree and have begun to read up on many saints who also experienced it. It's a test.

 

[sweetvi]

I am so happy about this topic. I now know I'm not alone. I feel sometimes doubt and worry but I know I can't go back to the place I've been in and I push to move forward because I need and Want my God

 

[Poohbear]

Thanks for sharing auparavant

I sometimes feel like Mother Theresa when it comes to doubting my faith and feeling alone.

 

[MSee]

I don't want to harp on those tele-evangelists who did bad things...goodness knows our priest problems....but I'm wondering if the Eddie Long's of the world got to that point and could not deal with it effectively and live through the torture and turned to something to dull that pain, that dark period.

Thought provoking and deep topic. There are many who have faced this period. Just read from Genesis to Revelations. I call it the test of faith before a deeper relationship with God. I also believe that the more God believes in you (remember Job) the more our true enemy would pressure us to disbelieve God, when allowed. But what is faith that you can see, touch or feel. Why do we speak about the fight of faith and yet go under when facing the battle, because we can't hold on to something more tangible than a promise. She showed exceptional faith by keep going forward inspite of her feelings and doubt and that's what those letters prove.

It's funny you should mention tele-evangelists. I remember a message a long time ago by TD Jakes in which he was explaining what Jim Baker had described his life to be like before his fall. Unfortunately though, the consequences of our own choices can sometimes be blamed on God using terms such as testing, trial etc. A thin line between all those terms and consequences. Yet as I read 'The Necessity of the Enemy' I realise what is described in this thread is a road many dedicated children of God may have to walk on feeling very much alone and indeed some may fall before they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

How on earth did I start rambling like that. This topic has my head spinning

 

[MSee]

Thanks for sharing @auparavant

I sometimes feel like Mother Theresa when it comes to doubting my faith and feeling alone.

Poohbear never forget that we have a true enemy and one of his greatest weapons is deception. He knows our potential and he will try everything to destroy a child of God who have a destiny, especially if they are not aware of it. (I'm getting a bit nervous with what came to my mind to write but I'm going to write it anyway, under the safe hiding place of internet anonimity )

I've read your post over the years. Some in which you definately were walking through dark times, but I've always had a sense that you have a godly legacy to leave on this earth. pooh many of the greatest we like to 'preach' about had some serious dark days and were obviously lonely (Think Elijah). In the end they had to choose to simply believe, obey and keep on moving. I hope what I sense about you is correct. I'm no prophetess so excuse me if I'm off.