Did God “Abandon” Mother Teresa?

In most of the photos available online, Mother Teresa of Calcutta is seen beaming with a smile. Whether hunched beside the poor or standing alongside her fellow Missionaries of Charity, she always appeared with a bright face. Who would have thought that in her 87 years on earth, 50 were spent in the so-called “dark night of the soul”?

Ten years after the death of this “living saint,” her personal diaries and letters to her spiritual confessors were published in 2007 under the title Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Although she had ordered that this correspondence be destroyed, some of the letters sent to Archbishop (later Cardinal) T. Picachy were found after his death.

These private writings revealed a different side of the sari-clad nun who led a worldwide apostolate of charity. In them, she opened her heart about the immense suffering caused by what she described as “an apparent loss of God.” “That darkness that surrounds me on all sides, I can’t lift my soul to God, no light or inspiration enters my soul,” she wrote. She even confessed that heaven meant nothing to her, describing it as “an empty place.”

This revelation of her desolation of faith overshadowed, for a time, her immense work for the poor. Some dismissed her as an atheist who deep down did not believe in God, or as someone constantly struggling with a crisis of faith that left her badly depressed.

However, a deeper look at Christian theology and the experiences of other mystics shows that this was not what happened to Mother Teresa.

A Purgation of the Senses

Carmelite friar and mystic Saint John of the Cross famously wrote about his own struggle with the “dark night of the soul.” He described how the more he surrendered himself to God, the more helpless, uncomfortable, and confused he felt. Mother Teresa experienced something similar.  “There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so deep that it is painful, a suffering continual,  yet not wanted by God, repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal,” she wrote.

This experience should not be seen as a fall into despair, but as a profound journey into the “purgation of the senses.”

Italian mystic Saint Catherine of Genoa compared this state to the suffering of the souls in purgatory, which ultimately leads not to damnation but to “a very great contentment.” In this sense, when Mother Teresa felt that God had abandoned her, it was in fact a unique manifestation of His glory within her. She experienced His light so intensely that it canceled out her senses, cleansing her of earthly desires. It made her deeply dedicated to Him alone, so that nothing else mattered, not even the joys of the world.

A Thorn Against Pride

Mother Teresa was in the global spotlight for most of her missionary life. At the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had houses in more than 120 countries. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Her legacy of serving the least, the last, and the lost is groundbreaking.

Such prominence was not only a beacon of inspiration for the world but could also have tempted one to pride and arrogance. Yet because of her darkness, Mother Teresa was preserved from such danger.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the well-known Papal Preacher, described this dark night as God’s invention for today’s saints, who live constantly under the glare of the media spotlight. “It is the asbestos suit for the one who must walk amid the flames; it is the insulating material that impedes the escape of the electric current, causing short circuits,” he said. He further stressed that this “thorn in the flesh” protected Mother Teresa from being intoxicated by the glory and praise that surrounded her. “The interior pain that I feel is so great that I don’t feel anything from all the publicity and people’s talking,” Mother Teresa herself wrote.

A Lifelong Good Friday

After the release of her letters, some critics branded Mother Teresa an atheist, a religious figure who wore a mask of faith in public while privately drowning in doubt. But this is a deeply flawed interpretation of her inner struggle.

American missionary priest Father Robert Conroy described her life instead as a “lifelong Good Friday.” Mother Teresa’s dark night centered on sharing in the spiritual darkness of Calvary. She wrote: “Let us always remain with Mary our Mother on Calvary near the crucified Jesus.” Instead of dwelling in the eternal light, she chose to persevere in the night and in the constant search for His grace. Through this sacrifice, she aligned herself with the poor, a reflection of Jesus’ ongoing crucifixion. She may not have realized it fully, but her writings make it clear: “I wish to live in this world that is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them, to take upon myself something of their suffering.”

Her letters also revealed that at age 32, during a retreat in 1942, Mother Teresa made a spiritual promise to the Lord: “to give God anything that He may ask” and “not to refuse Him anything.” This vow of self-emptiness brought her the clouds of divine darkness and shaped her into the servant of God that the world most needed at that time.

Mother Teresa was far from being an atheist. If anything, her dark night was the height of faithfulness to God. Longing and isolation from Him may be intense and painful, but they can also be His extreme way of calling us to love more purely and trust more deeply. She constantly sought the Lord, even as her heart ached. This constant search left her no time to indulge in the glories the world offered. What mattered was the journey that led to the Kingdom.

“Imprint on my soul and life the suffering of your heart… I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me,” she wrote.

Perhaps without realizing it, she attained through her greatest inner battle a special gift, a taste of heaven that our limited human minds cannot yet comprehend, at least while we still walk upon this earth.