Tarmac October 2007.pdf - Chaminade High School

TARMACEditorial
by Michael Contillo
‘08
“For believers,
Mother Teresa’s
sense of
abandonment
echoes the
abandonment that
Christ Himself
experienced on
the Cross.”
A Light in the Midst of Darkness
Despite Doubts, Mother Teresa Followed Christ and Served the Poor
She bemoaned the dryness and darkness of her soul.
She said that her smile was just a cloak that covered
the truth. She has been called the “Saint of
the Gutters.” But we know her more commonly as
Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The recent release of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light
(Doubleday) has ignited a heated controversy over the
inner spiritual life of one of the most beloved and important
religious figures of modern day.
The book highlights 66 years of correspondences between
Mother Teresa and her confessors. In these correspondences,
Mother Teresa speaks of her private dialogue
with Jesus Himself, but more often of the absence of Jesus
and of any spiritual consolation whatsoever.
“When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there
is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts
return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul,” she
writes. “I am told God loves me – and yet the reality
of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that
nothing touches my soul.”
Ironically enough, the book’s editor and compiler is
Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk – a senior Missionaries of
Charity member who is responsible for presenting the
case for Mother Teresa’s canonization. He published
the book to chronicle the modern-day saint’s faith-filled
perseverance in the midst of spiritual darkness.
According to Rev. Kolodiejchuk, “The compilation sheds
light on what St. John of the Cross deemed as the ‘dark night’
stage in the growth of spiritual masters. She lived with the
darkness without the abandonment of her belief or work.”
Prominent atheists have pointed to Mother Teresa’s
dark night of doubts as further evidence that God does
not exist. In an article published
in the September 10, 2007 issue of
Newsweek, Christopher Hitchens,
author of God Is Not Great,
writes, “. . . [this] is the inevitable
result of a dogma that asks people
to believe in impossible things
and then makes them feel abject
and guilty when their innate reason
rebels.”
“ . . . the Church should have
had the elementary decency to
let the earth lie lightly on this
troubled and miserable lady, and
not to invoke her long anguish
to recruit the credulous to a
blind faith in which she herself
had long ceased to believe,”
Hitchens concludes.
Mother Teresa’s admirers see
things differently. Says the Rev.
James Martin, an editor for the
Jesuit magazine America, “Everything
she’s experiencing is
what average believers experience
in their spiritual lives writ
large. I have known scores of
people who have felt abandoned by God and had
doubts about God’s existence. And this book expresses
that in such a stunning way but shows her full of complete
trust at the same time.”
The Rev. Joseph Neuner, a prominent theologian and
one of Mother Teresa’s confidants, firmly believes that her
spiritual turbulence reflected “a craving for God that validated
His hidden presence in her life.” She felt God’s absence,
but she never abandoned the search for Him. That
search, in itself, demonstrates a belief in God that Hitchens
and other atheists have called into question.
For believers, Mother Teresa’s sense of abandonment
echoes the abandonment that Christ Himself experienced
on the Cross. In 1951, Mother Teresa wrote that she wanted
to share in the Passion of Christ. “I want to . . . drink
ONLY [her emphasis] from His chalice of pain.”
That wish was granted. In an undated reflection from
her correspondences, Mother Teresa cries, “Lord, My God,
who am I that You should forsake me?” Nailed upon the
Cross, Jesus voiced the same sense of abandonment: “My
God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
See “Mother Teresa,” page 4.
T ARMAC
Established 1934
Published by the students of Chaminade High School
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2 COMMENTARY
Tarmac • October 2007
TEAM A
TEAM B
Anthony Kolodzinski
Nicholas Plumeri
SPORTS EDITORS
Kyle Blanco
Tyler White
FEATURE EDITORS
Eamonn Cummings
Harry Liberman
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF:
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Salvatore Garofalo Robert Ryan
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
FOR WRITING
Alex Kamath
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LAYOUT STAFF
Byron Smith
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FOR PRODUCTION
Kevin Doherty
EDITORIAL EDITORS NEWS EDITORS
Michael Contillo
Dennis Grabowski
Phil McAndrews
HEADLINES AND
CAPTIONS EDITOR
Allen Buzzeo
Anthony Ferrara, Anthony Mastroianni, Sean Till, Colin Dickinson, Michael
Jacobellis, Ryan Krebs, Jaison Kuruvilla, Dylan Walsh
WRITERS: John Maher, Michael Riley, Michael Gaffney, Desmond McWeeney,
Denis O’Leary, Cody Abbey, Frank Arland, Michael Bucaria, Joseph Dalli, Daniel
Hinton, Anthony Nania, Eddie Parisi, Liam Ray, Troy Sampson, Fred Cucciniello