Mother Teresa's spiritual darkness

One thing that is brought out in detail in the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light is the spiritual darkness Mother Teresa walked through for many years. She experienced rapturous union with God in the period before starting her famous mission in Calcutta. However, not long after beginning the work, she was beset by lingering feelings of emptiness and interior loneliness. She felt that Jesus had ceased communing with her.

This prolonged aridity in her relationship with God tempted her to renounce the vow she had taken to refuse Jesus nothing he would ever ask of her. Inner turmoil seems to have tempted her far more than the glory that came to her and the Missionaries of Charity.

It took Mother Teresa several years to begin to understand what the spiritual darkness meant. All of this causes us to step back and wonder: if I were to commit myself to God in this way, would I also allow him to do whatever he wants with me?

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