In 1991, Msgr. Clement Connolly, pastor of Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, packed his backpack for a solo, nine-month sabbatical in the third world.
After visiting East Africa to witness for himself the devastation wreaked by the AIDS crisis, he traveled to India where he settled in Calcutta for two months with a community of Jesuits living on the edge of a Hindu slum. News of his arrival soon spread to the chaplain who celebrated daily Mass at the Missionaries of Charity Motherhouse.
"He saw that I was a free spirit wandering around and said he'd like to go away for awhile and [asked] if I'd take his place and be the chaplain and say the morning Mass. I said, 'Sure.' So I'd go there every morning about 6 a.m. and say Mass for 250 nuns sitting on the floor with Mother Teresa," said Msgr. Connolly, who, then at age 51, was 30 years younger than the religious community's foundress.
Following the Mass, Mother Teresa would sit in the sacristy at a small card table while Msgr. Connolly ate a breakfast of tea, toast and one egg, which was a treat since the Missionaries of Charity ate the same simple boiled grain breakfast which they shared with the poor.
He found Mother Teresa very alert, "up" and optimistic about the congregation's ministries. At her request, he gave about six one-day retreats for the sisters serving in other neighborhoods. "She was very directional," said Msgr. Connolly. "She'd say make sure you emphasize our fourth vow, to serve 'the poorest of the poor.' She was a very strict disciplinarian."
At the same time, he noted, Mother Teresa was "very accessible" to visitors, agreeing to pose for photos even though she wasn't fond of having her picture taken. He overheard her say she had made an agreement with Jesus that every time she had her picture taken, Jesus would let out a soul from purgatory. He had several pictures taken with the diminutive nun, who died in 1997.
He remembers their conversations centering on the spirituality of the sisters and the virtues of discipline and obedience. She never gave a hint of the spiritual dryness she reportedly suffered almost from the time she founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1948, according to a Time Magazine Aug. 23 article based on a new book of Mother Teresa's letters to her confessors and superiors.
Released Sept. 4, the day before the tenth anniversary of her death, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," is edited by Missionaries of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, who, as Mother Teresa's postulator, is responsible for petitioning for her sainthood. The letters in the book, complied by Father Kolodiejchuk, were gathered as part of the canonization process, which has already led to Mother Teresa's beatification in 2003.
"I think people would find it very consoling that Mother Teresa went through the dark night of the soul for such a long time, but still she was faithful," noted Msgr. Connolly. He said the single most important message from the revelation about Mother Teresa's spiritual dryness during most of the last 50 years of her life is that love is not a feeling but a decision.
"I think that's one of the things she demonstrates for us in a very sacrificial way. As for the reference in the article that maybe she didn't believe in the existence of God, I think that's not a theological statement. That's merely a statement of emptiness or frustration…[where someone] just makes an emotional expression."
He takes issue with the Time article title, "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith."
"I don't think she had a crisis of faith," said Msgr. Connolly. "I think that's an interpretation. I wouldn't validate that. I think she got up at 4:30 every morning and made a decision to pray [although] she wasn't consoled in her prayer.
"I would say a crisis in faith means that you're doubting. And my guess is that she wasn't doubting. There's no question about her relationship with Jesus. She spoke about it, she lived it, she hoped for it, she yearned for it. I don't see a crisis in faith there. I see a great agony for the lack of spiritual consolation.
"The consolation of her life and prayer was in those who surrounded her. They were all consoled. And now, people who read the book will be consoled. They'll find some spiritual energy, some healing, some source of encouragement. So, in some ways, the spiritual consolation that was not given to her will be given to you and to me."
Mother Teresa's mantra for the Missionaries of Charity, noted Msgr. Connolly, was that they had to become poor themselves to minister to the poor. "So, in a certain way, while she is a servant of the poor, she must become poor. And this whole desolation is part of a journey of poverty. All the things she had hoped for [spiritual consolation] didn't come to her.
"It was a radical, radical poverty.… Serving the poorest of the poor, she became the poorest of the poor in this sense. So the anguish of the poor was in her flesh: the loneliness of the poor, the abandonment of the poor, the sense of frustration. It all became part of her journey." |