Tongwei is a business student in NUS, she works hard to glorify God through her studies by always giving her best and no matter how busy she may be, she makes time to serve and love disciples.
Hi guys!
I came across a really interesting article that talks about a side of Mother Teresa whom the world does not know, a Teresa who was spiritually dry and struggling.
"On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."
Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the 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 ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."
The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared."
(You can read the full article at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html Copyright, Time Magazine)
Is this beginning to sound discouraging? Yeah, that's what I thought at first as well...But reading on, it's clear that Mother Teresa had the ability to do what she did because of God. To have such a heart for the poor and suffering and the to carry out her love with physical sacrifices - this is the divine at work.
I was really impacted by the article, because it just shows the enormous amount of faith Mother Teresa had. To continue with her work in the order even though she wasn't "feeling inspired", or "seeing God in her life". That, to me, is the ultimate testament of faith - clinging on to God even when it seems infinitely bleak.
Let's question ourselves, are we disciples only when life is rosy? Basing our faith on volatile feelings about God. For Mother Teresa, the cross was real, and was never discounted by the fact that she faced devastating agony every single day for 50 years. I can imagine myself in her shoes, feeling bitter that God didn't show Himself to me or make my path smoother (Hello!? I'm working for you, I've devoted my life to your cause , where are youuuuu?!?!), but Mother Teresa humbly and faithfully stuck close to God.
We can all take a leaf out her book.
Love,
Tong Wei
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