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Communication FUNdamentals
Sep. 3, 2007
The Labor and Faith of Mother Teresa...care to comment?
Happy Labor Day! In honor of this day set aside to give rest to the workers, I thought I would share something that was recently in the news. A crisis of faith for Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God to be a missionary spreading the love of Christ. She worked tirelessly among India's poorest. Her Missionaries of Charity had grown from 12 sisters in India to over 3,000 in 517 missions throughout 100 countries worldwide. Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, in her convent in India at the age of 87. This Catholic Nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner was an icon of strength and faith to so many.
Recently, it was revealed that she had a 50 year struggle of faith. She kept letters that she wrote detailing her struggles in the face of such hardships and horrors of poverty that she dealt with each and every day. In her will, she had asked that these letters be destroyed but her friend has put them together in a new book called Come Be My Light. It is a collection of 40-odd letters written by Mother Teresa to her spiritual guides through the years.
I am not sure how I feel about someone making her personal struggles public after her will had asked that they be destroyed. They are hers. But I can't help but feel better knowing that someone who was this strong in her faith on the outside enabling her to do so very much, struggled like the rest of us!
When you read the biographies of great men, you often find that they struggled with the path they knew was their own. They had doubts. They had fears. They were helped by mentors, wives, friends... They acheived great things often in spite of their fears and doubts. Knowing these struggles allows us to believe that we can too!
Christopher Hitchens took this opportunity to spew his Hate Speech (though no one from the Hate Speech Crowd would call it such because Mother Teressa wasn't homosexual.) He calls her "a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud".
I do wonder what he would say to a non religious person who had doubts about doing what he believed in for others. What about the fireman who rushes into a burning building to save several children. Would he be a hypocrite for having thoughts of his own mortality before risking his life for what HE believed in? Would the absence of faith in a deity make his beliefs about saving these children fraudulent? I doubt it! No. Hypocrites and frauds are only reserved for those of faith to Mr. Hitchens.
What do you think? Should her letters be made public? Does it make you feel stronger knowing that even someone of such outward faith who accomplished so much struggled too?
From JoJo's Purple Crayon...
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Sep. 3, 2007 - Untitled Comment
I, too, was saddened at the thought that this precious lady had requested her letters be destroyed, only to have them made public. Perhaps there was a reason she herself didn't do away with them. God does work all things out for His glory.
I can't imagine the horrors she dealt with each day, seeing unbelievable suffering among those she ministered to. I'm glad she used writing as an outlet to release her inner pain and conflict. Immortal man can't do what she did and NOT feel confused.
Knowing that she struggled and questioned God, but continued to do the work He had her do assures me that all followers "can do all things through Christ who gives (us) strength."
Blessings,
Karla