Citations:dark night of the soul


 * 2003 May, “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa”, a piece in First Things, by Carol Zaleski:
 * [W]hat it shows us is Mother Teresa as a classic Christian mystic whose inner life was burned through by the fire of charity, and whose fidelity was tested and purified by an intense trial of faith, a true dark night of the soul.


 * 2005 December 28, “Dark Night of the Soul”, an article in Heartlight Magazine, by Scott Owings:
 * Countless have been the times that I have heard (and probably said) something to the effect: "This is a dark night of the soul." Though I now don't plan on correcting people's misuse of this phrase, Gerald May — with the help of 15th Century mystics St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila [sic] — has enlightened my understanding of how the so-called "dark night" experience is an essential, though difficult, part of spiritual formation.


 * 2014 September 18, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s Dark Night of the Soul”, a column from the Catholic News Agency, by Msgr. M. Francis Mannion:
 * In one of her letters, Mother Teresa summarizes her experience as follows: “There is so much contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God—so deep that it is painful—a suffering continual—and yet not wanted by God—repulsed—empty—no faith—no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means nothing—to me it looks like an empty place.”


 * This may shock people of a sunnier spiritual disposition, and has led some atheists (like the bombastic Englishman Christopher Hitchens) to accuse Mother Teresa of hypocrisy and to feel vindicated in their own lack of belief in God. She was, after all, they said, an atheist just like them.


 * However, the “dark night of the soul” Mother Teresa experienced was as far from atheism as one can imagine. Atheists typically feel quite comfortable in their disbelief in God and are in no way troubled by it. Their sense of God’s absence is undergirded by the more fundamental belief that God does not exist and that religion generally is the source of the worst evils of the world.


 * The Christian (or other religious believer) who experiences a sense of God’s absence in his or her life is often highly committed to the life of faith, has a strong belief in God’s existence, and—in the case of Mother Teresa—practices a demanding life of self-sacrifice and service.