St. Teresa of Calcutta — The Catholic Saint Who Couldn't Feel God for 50 Years

1
00:00:00,302 --> 00:00:05,702
For nearly 50 years, one of the most famous
women on earth wrote private letters to her

2
00:00:05,702 --> 00:00:13,782
spiritual directors. In them, she said she couldn't
feel God at all, not a little, not sometimes,

3
00:00:14,302 --> 00:00:21,744
almost never. The whole world saw her as joy
itself. She was living something very different.

4
00:00:33,070 --> 00:00:39,890
Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints. This is episode 15, so 15 weeks, 15

5
00:00:39,890 --> 00:00:45,810
saints. And if you're new here, welcome to the
porch. Stick around and if this hits you, subscribe

6
00:00:45,810 --> 00:00:51,610
so you don't miss next week, a new saint every
Thursday. First off, I want to apologize. If

7
00:00:51,610 --> 00:00:56,290
you tried to listen to last week's episode in
the first seven to eight hours it was live,

8
00:00:56,510 --> 00:01:02,350
you probably got St. Nicholas again instead
of St. Genesius. I uploaded the wrong file

9
00:01:02,350 --> 00:01:07,750
to the RSS feed. That's not an excuse, it's
just me running this whole show and each episode

10
00:01:07,750 --> 00:01:13,410
takes about 30 to 40 hours to put together.
So sometimes I mess things up. Sorry about

11
00:01:13,410 --> 00:01:18,870
that. And I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't
happen again. We are back to a known saint

12
00:01:18,870 --> 00:01:25,390
this week. You already know her face. You have
probably seen it a hundred times. Small, in

13
00:01:25,390 --> 00:01:31,586
a white and blue habit, surrounded by the poorest
people in Calcutta. This is the story of Saint

14
00:01:31,586 --> 00:01:37,906
Teresa of Calcutta. Most of the world calls
her Mother Teresa, and almost nobody knew until

15
00:01:37,906 --> 00:01:45,906
after she died what she was actually carrying
the whole time. She was born in 1910 in a city

16
00:01:45,906 --> 00:01:52,686
called Skopje, in what's now North Macedonia.
Her family was Albanian and reasonably well

17
00:01:52,686 --> 00:01:58,606
off. Her father ran a successful business and
was active in local politics, but that changed

18
00:01:58,606 --> 00:02:05,210
fast. He died suddenly when she was only eight
years old, likely poisoned according to some

19
00:02:05,210 --> 00:02:10,670
accounts over his political involvement. Her
mother was left to raise three children alone

20
00:02:10,670 --> 00:02:16,850
and money got tight very fast. But her mother
kept the family deeply involved in their parish

21
00:02:16,850 --> 00:02:23,858
and by all accounts that faith only got stronger
under the pressure, not weaker. As a teenager,

22
00:02:23,858 --> 00:02:28,578
she got involved with a youth group at her local
church that focused on stories of missionaries

23
00:02:28,578 --> 00:02:35,038
working overseas, the kind of far-off, difficult,
sacrificial work that most people only read

24
00:02:35,038 --> 00:02:41,698
about. Something about those stories stuck with
her. By the time she was 17, she had decided

25
00:02:41,698 --> 00:02:49,058
she wanted that kind of life for herself. At
18, she left home for good, and as far as anyone

26
00:02:49,058 --> 00:02:54,810
knows, she never saw her mother or sister ever
again. She joined a religious order called

27
00:02:54,810 --> 00:03:01,270
the Sisters of Laredo, trained briefly in Ireland
to learn English, and then was sent to India,

28
00:03:01,329 --> 00:03:08,070
where she took the name Sister Mary Theresa,
after Saint Therese of LeSue. For close to

29
00:03:08,070 --> 00:03:14,470
20 years, she taught school in Calcutta at a
convent school for girls from wealthier families.

30
00:03:14,910 --> 00:03:21,290
She was good at it. She became the school's
principal. By every outward measure, she had

31
00:03:21,290 --> 00:03:29,206
a stable, respected life. A vocation, a role,
a purpose. Most people would have called that

32
00:03:29,206 --> 00:03:37,586
enough. Then in 1946, on a train ride to a retreat,
something happened that she later described

33
00:03:37,586 --> 00:03:45,466
as a call within a call. Not a call to become
a nun, she already was one. A second, separate

34
00:03:45,466 --> 00:03:50,746
call telling her to leave the convent school
and go live among the poorest people in the

35
00:03:50,746 --> 00:03:56,518
city. the ones dying in the streets with nobody
to help them. She never described the exact

36
00:03:56,518 --> 00:04:01,838
details of that train ride publicly. She kept
most of it private, even from people close

37
00:04:01,838 --> 00:04:08,318
to her. But she said later that the message
itself was clear and unmistakable, impossible

38
00:04:08,318 --> 00:04:14,698
to talk herself out of. Leave everything. Give
up the school, the students, the stable, the

39
00:04:14,698 --> 00:04:22,142
respected life she had spent almost 20 years
building. Go into the slums. served the poorest

40
00:04:22,142 --> 00:04:28,062
of the poor, not from a school building with
walls and a schedule, but right where they

41
00:04:28,062 --> 00:04:34,262
are, on the street, with nothing between her
and the need in front of her. That's not a

42
00:04:34,262 --> 00:04:40,042
small ask for anyone, let alone a woman in her
mid-30s who had already built an entire life

43
00:04:40,042 --> 00:04:47,002
around one calling and was now being told from
somewhere she trusted completely to walk away

44
00:04:47,002 --> 00:04:52,998
from it for a second one. It took her a couple
years to get permission from the church to

45
00:04:52,998 --> 00:04:59,678
actually do it. But in 1948, she finally left
the convent, traded her habit for a simple

46
00:04:59,678 --> 00:05:05,058
white siree with blue trim, the outfit almost
everyone pictures now when they think of her,

47
00:05:05,058 --> 00:05:11,078
and walked into the slums of Calcutta with no
plan beyond finding people who needed help

48
00:05:11,078 --> 00:05:18,918
and then helping them. She started with nothing.
No building, no staff, no funding. Basic first

49
00:05:18,918 --> 00:05:23,962
aid? She learned quickly and applied on the
street, teaching children to read using sticks

50
00:05:23,962 --> 00:05:29,522
in the dirt because she had no paper or chalkboard.
She picked up dying people off the street,

51
00:05:29,582 --> 00:05:35,401
people other institutions had turned away, people
with diseases nobody wanted to touch, people

52
00:05:35,401 --> 00:05:41,382
who had been left to die alone on the sidewalk
and gave them a clean place to die with some

53
00:05:41,382 --> 00:05:47,822
measure of dignity and care, even when there
was no cure left to offer them. Sometimes that

54
00:05:47,822 --> 00:05:53,274
just meant holding someone's hand while they
died, so at least one person on earth was there

55
00:05:53,274 --> 00:06:00,654
with them. In 1952, the city gave her a building
to use, a former rest house next to a Hindu

56
00:06:00,654 --> 00:06:08,654
temple, not exactly a natural fit on paper.
She named it Nirmal Hrdi, which means home

57
00:06:08,654 --> 00:06:13,634
of the pure heart, and turned it into a place
where the dying could spend their final hours

58
00:06:13,634 --> 00:06:20,890
or days being cared for, regardless of their
religion. It wasn't universally welcomed at

59
00:06:20,890 --> 00:06:26,510
first. Some in the neighborhood objected to
a Catholic nun running a facility that close

60
00:06:26,510 --> 00:06:32,910
to a temple. She didn't argue the point publicly.
She just kept doing the work and over time,

61
00:06:33,010 --> 00:06:38,190
most of the objections faded because people
could see what was actually happening inside.

62
00:06:39,010 --> 00:06:45,450
In 1950, she founded a religious order of her
own, the Missionaries of Charity, built entirely

63
00:06:45,450 --> 00:06:53,270
around this work. It grew. slowly at first,
but then fast. By the time she died, the order

64
00:06:53,270 --> 00:06:59,250
had thousands of sisters running homes for the
dying, orphanages, and hospices in over a

65
00:06:59,250 --> 00:07:07,130
hundred countries. The world, well, it noticed.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She

66
00:07:07,130 --> 00:07:13,610
met popes and presidents. Her face became, for
most of the 20th century, the single most recognizable

67
00:07:13,610 --> 00:07:19,310
image of Christian charity on the planet. People
who knew nothing else about the Catholic Church

68
00:07:19,310 --> 00:07:26,070
knew who Mother Teresa was. When she accepted
the Nobel Prize, she asked the committee to

69
00:07:26,070 --> 00:07:31,750
cancel the traditional celebratory banquet that
comes with it and give her the money instead,

70
00:07:32,010 --> 00:07:40,490
roughly $192,000 at the time, so it could go
directly to the poor in Calcutta. That single

71
00:07:40,490 --> 00:07:45,850
request tells you most of what you need to know
about how she operated for the rest of her

72
00:07:45,850 --> 00:07:52,022
life. Fame came to her constantly. She kept
redirecting nearly all of it toward the people

73
00:07:52,022 --> 00:07:57,922
she had started this whole thing for. Her reach
went places you would not expect for a nun

74
00:07:57,922 --> 00:08:04,662
who started with nothing but a siree and a plan
to help dying strangers. She ran missions inside

75
00:08:04,662 --> 00:08:10,362
communist countries during the Cold War, at
a time where religious work was heavily restricted

76
00:08:10,362 --> 00:08:16,646
or outright banned in many of them. Her own
home country, Albania, was one of the most

77
00:08:16,646 --> 00:08:22,506
aggressively atheist communist states in the
world for decades. Practicing any religion

78
00:08:22,506 --> 00:08:29,306
there was illegal for most of her adult life.
She wasn't allowed back in Albania until 1989,

79
00:08:29,306 --> 00:08:36,106
when the regime was finally losing its grip.
More than 60 years after she had left as a

80
00:08:36,106 --> 00:08:42,794
teenager. She sent help to Armenia after a devastating
earthquake in 1988. worked with victims of

81
00:08:42,794 --> 00:08:48,674
the Chernobyl disaster and set up missions in
famine-stricken Ethiopia, always going toward

82
00:08:48,674 --> 00:08:54,454
whichever crisis had the fewest people willing
to show up for it. And almost everyone who

83
00:08:54,454 --> 00:08:59,174
watched her from the outside assumed the same
thing, that a woman who gave her whole life

84
00:08:59,174 --> 00:09:05,614
to this kind of love must be overflowing with
an obvious, unshakable closeness to God, that

85
00:09:05,614 --> 00:09:11,954
the joy on her face came from a well that never
ran dry. Here's what nobody knew until after

86
00:09:11,954 --> 00:09:18,294
she died. For most of those same decades, the
ones where she's founding hospices, winning

87
00:09:18,294 --> 00:09:24,914
the Nobel Prize, becoming a global symbol of
faith, she was writing letters to her spiritual

88
00:09:24,914 --> 00:09:30,394
directors, priests she trusted with her most
private thoughts, describing something almost

89
00:09:30,394 --> 00:09:38,454
nobody expected. She said she couldn't feel
God's presence at all, not comfort, not closeness,

90
00:09:38,614 --> 00:09:44,890
nothing. She described a kind of interior darkness
that started not long after she began her work

91
00:09:44,890 --> 00:09:52,410
with the poor. And by her own account, it lasted
with only a few brief exceptions for the rest

92
00:09:52,410 --> 00:09:59,210
of her life. In these letters, she wrote about
praying into what felt like complete silence,

93
00:09:59,210 --> 00:10:06,930
about continuing to believe in God while feeling
emotionally almost nothing back, about smiling

94
00:10:06,930 --> 00:10:13,174
at the people she served running an order built
entirely on love while privately describing

95
00:10:13,174 --> 00:10:20,814
her own soul as empty. These letters weren't
public. She asked more than once that they

96
00:10:20,814 --> 00:10:26,414
be destroyed after her death. Her spiritual
directors didn't destroy them, and years after

97
00:10:26,414 --> 00:10:32,554
she died, with the church's permission, they
were published in a book. That's the only reason

98
00:10:32,554 --> 00:10:40,362
any of us know this part of her story at all.
So, Why didn't they honor her wishes? The priest

99
00:10:40,362 --> 00:10:46,562
overseeing her case for sainthood, Father Brian
Kolodichuk, argued the letters were too important

100
00:10:46,562 --> 00:10:52,982
to lose. He believed they proved the depth of
her faith better than anything else could,

101
00:10:53,582 --> 00:10:59,242
and that they could genuinely help other people
carrying the same kind of darkness, people

102
00:10:59,242 --> 00:11:04,722
who might think something's wrong with them
for feeling it. The Vatican agreed. and the

103
00:11:04,722 --> 00:11:10,062
letters were published as part of the official
case for declaring her as a saint. The church

104
00:11:10,062 --> 00:11:15,962
took something she wanted destroyed and decided
the world needed it more than she needed her

105
00:11:15,962 --> 00:11:22,662
privacy. Now, I wanna be careful here because
I know that sounds like it could shake someone's

106
00:11:22,662 --> 00:11:28,842
faith instead of building it up, but there's
actually a long tradition in the church for

107
00:11:28,842 --> 00:11:35,674
exactly this experience. A 16th century Spanish
priest and mystic named Saint John of the Cross

108
00:11:35,674 --> 00:11:42,514
wrote about it directly centuries before Mother
Teresa was born. He called it the dark night

109
00:11:42,514 --> 00:11:49,374
of the soul, a stretch of time, sometimes years,
where prayer feels like talking into an empty

110
00:11:49,374 --> 00:11:56,814
room and God feels completely absent, even though
the person keeps praying anyway. Some of the

111
00:11:56,814 --> 00:12:02,578
most respected Christian mystics in history
describe something similar. Mother Teresa's

112
00:12:02,578 --> 00:12:07,978
version of it just happened to last for decades
and happened to hit a woman the whole world

113
00:12:07,978 --> 00:12:14,538
assumed was the most spiritually satisfied person
alive. There is a difference worth naming here

114
00:12:14,538 --> 00:12:21,278
too. This was not doubt in the sense of not
believing God existed. She never stopped believing

115
00:12:21,278 --> 00:12:29,022
that. What she lost for most of her adult life
was the feeling of it. The sense of closeness,

116
00:12:29,082 --> 00:12:33,842
the comfort, the emotional confirmation that
a lot of us assume is supposed to come with

117
00:12:33,842 --> 00:12:40,982
real faith. She kept the belief. She just carried
it without ever feeling it confirmed back to

118
00:12:40,982 --> 00:12:47,702
her. Now on how solid this part of the story
is historically, this is actually the best

119
00:12:47,702 --> 00:12:52,782
documented episode we have done. Every other
Saint we have covered, we are working from

120
00:12:52,782 --> 00:12:58,718
accounts written down after the fact, sometimes
centuries after. This one comes straight from

121
00:12:58,718 --> 00:13:04,758
her own handwriting, letters she actually wrote,
kept and later authenticated by the church

122
00:13:04,758 --> 00:13:10,638
itself and published with the Vatican's approval
as part of the process that led to her canonization.

123
00:13:11,318 --> 00:13:17,118
There is very little guesswork here. If anything,
this is the one where you can trust almost

124
00:13:17,118 --> 00:13:24,518
every detail. What gets me is what she did with
it. She didn't quit. She didn't stop serving.

125
00:13:24,518 --> 00:13:29,862
She didn't... even tell most of the people closest
to her. Most of her own sisters in the order

126
00:13:29,862 --> 00:13:36,402
she ran had no idea any of this was happening
inside of her. She kept running an order built

127
00:13:36,402 --> 00:13:42,422
on love, kept picking up dying strangers off
the street, kept smiling for cameras and comforting

128
00:13:42,422 --> 00:13:50,002
grieving families for nearly 50 years while
privately telling her confessor she could not

129
00:13:50,002 --> 00:13:57,002
feel the God she was doing it all for. Her health
started failing years before the end. She had

130
00:13:57,002 --> 00:14:03,082
a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while visiting
the Pope, and another one in 1989 that briefly

131
00:14:03,082 --> 00:14:08,942
stopped her heart entirely. She was revived
and kept going. She had a pacemaker put in

132
00:14:08,942 --> 00:14:13,442
after that, plus bouts of pneumonia and heart
trouble that kept landing her in hospitals

133
00:14:13,442 --> 00:14:18,342
throughout the 1990s. And she finally stepped
down as head of the Missionaries of Charity

134
00:14:18,342 --> 00:14:26,066
in March of 1997. handing the order over to
a successor after nearly 50 years running it.

135
00:14:26,466 --> 00:14:33,926
She died six months later on September 5th,
1997 at the age of 87. Now, here's a detail

136
00:14:33,926 --> 00:14:39,846
that still catches people off guard. Just five
days earlier, on August 31st, Princess Diana

137
00:14:39,846 --> 00:14:45,606
had died in a car crash in Paris. The two women
had actually met and become friends in the

138
00:14:45,606 --> 00:14:51,006
years before. Diana had visited Mother Teresa's
homes more than once and supported her work

139
00:14:51,006 --> 00:14:58,486
publicly. For that one strange week, the world
lost two of the most photographed women alive,

140
00:14:58,626 --> 00:15:04,426
back to back, and Mother Teresa's death, which
would have been a massive news in almost any

141
00:15:04,426 --> 00:15:09,906
other week of the 20th century, got pushed to
the side of a news cycle still consumed with

142
00:15:09,906 --> 00:15:16,666
Diana's funeral. But India gave her a state
funeral anyway. Heads of state and dignitaries

143
00:15:16,666 --> 00:15:23,110
from around the world came. The streets of Calcutta,
the same streets she'd once walked with nothing

144
00:15:23,110 --> 00:15:30,950
but a siree and a plan, were lined for miles.
The church started the process toward declaring

145
00:15:30,950 --> 00:15:36,890
her a saint almost immediately after her death,
faster than usual, since there's normally a

146
00:15:36,890 --> 00:15:43,010
required waiting period after the death before
the process can even begin, and that waiting

147
00:15:43,010 --> 00:15:50,610
period was waived in her case. Canonization
requires two confirmed miracles credited to

148
00:15:50,610 --> 00:15:55,830
a person's intercession after they've died.
The first came from a woman in India named

149
00:15:55,830 --> 00:16:01,370
Monica Besra, who said a tumor in her abdomen
disappeared after she prayed to Mother Teresa.

150
00:16:02,090 --> 00:16:09,950
That miracle led to her beatification, the step
just below sainthood. In 2003, under Pope John

151
00:16:09,950 --> 00:16:16,266
Paul II, a second miracle, the healing of a
man in Brazil, cleared the way for her full

152
00:16:16,266 --> 00:16:23,126
canonization in 2016 under Pope Francis. I want
to be fair here and mention something else,

153
00:16:23,126 --> 00:16:29,566
since we have talked before about not sanitizing
these stories. Mother Teresa wasn't without

154
00:16:29,566 --> 00:16:34,966
critics, even at the height of her fame. Some
journalists and doctors who visited her homes

155
00:16:34,966 --> 00:16:40,486
for the dying raised concerns over the years
about medical care, pain management, and living

156
00:16:40,486 --> 00:16:45,486
conditions inside them, arguing, The funding
she received worldwide should have brought

157
00:16:45,486 --> 00:16:51,286
better facilities and stronger medical treatment
for the people in her care. Her defenders have

158
00:16:51,286 --> 00:16:56,486
argued her mission was never meant to replace
hospitals. It was meant to make sure nobody

159
00:16:56,486 --> 00:17:03,386
died alone and unloved on a sidewalk, which
was the specific, narrow problem she set out

160
00:17:03,386 --> 00:17:09,646
to solve in 1948. That disagreement is still
debated today. I'm not going to pretend it

161
00:17:09,646 --> 00:17:15,250
doesn't exist, but... It doesn't change the
historical fact of what she built, how long

162
00:17:15,250 --> 00:17:22,950
she kept building it, or what she was carrying
privately the entire time she did. All right,

163
00:17:22,950 --> 00:17:29,938
back to the porch. I keep thinking about the
name of the book where all this came out. It's

164
00:17:29,938 --> 00:17:36,538
called Come Be My Light. That's from the very
words that started her whole mission. The call

165
00:17:36,538 --> 00:17:41,798
she said she received on that train, telling
her to go be a light for people in the darkest,

166
00:17:41,918 --> 00:17:49,182
most forgotten corners of Calcutta. And for
almost the entire time she was being that light

167
00:17:49,182 --> 00:17:57,022
for other people, she couldn't feel any light
in herself. I don't think that makes her faith

168
00:17:57,022 --> 00:18:03,682
fake. I think it might be the most honest picture
of what faith actually requires that we have

169
00:18:03,682 --> 00:18:10,602
covered on this show. Most of us think faith
means feeling something, a warmth, a certainty,

170
00:18:10,822 --> 00:18:19,106
a sense that God is close. And most of us quietly
assume that If we stop feeling that, our faith

171
00:18:19,106 --> 00:18:26,878
would be broken or we'd have permission to stop.
Mother Teresa kept going for decades without

172
00:18:26,878 --> 00:18:32,878
the feeling at all. She kept the promises,
she kept showing up, she kept loving people

173
00:18:32,878 --> 00:18:38,738
who had nothing on days when she herself felt
like she had nothing left to give it with.

174
00:18:40,782 --> 00:18:45,802
If anyone on this earth had a right to feel
God's presence, you would think it would be

175
00:18:45,802 --> 00:18:53,202
her. She got 50 years of silence instead, and
she never once used that silence as an excuse

176
00:18:53,202 --> 00:19:02,374
to stop. think most of us treat feeling and
faith like they are the same thing. Mother

177
00:19:02,374 --> 00:19:11,314
Teresa's whole life argues they're not. Faith
in her case wasn't a feeling at all. It was

178
00:19:11,314 --> 00:19:18,130
a decision she kept making alone over and over
with nothing but her word to hold her to it.

179
00:19:20,686 --> 00:19:27,886
So here's the question this week. What are you
still doing faithfully even on the days it

180
00:19:27,886 --> 00:19:34,746
doesn't feel like anything? Is there a version
of you that only shows up when it feels good?

181
00:19:35,226 --> 00:19:41,390
And is there a version of you underneath that
that could show up anyway the way she did?

182
00:19:43,950 --> 00:19:50,990
And now it is time for the closing prayer. Lord,
thank you for Teresa of Calcutta. Thank you

183
00:19:50,990 --> 00:19:57,210
for a woman who kept loving you out loud for
50 years while feeling almost nothing in return.

184
00:19:58,010 --> 00:20:06,110
For anyone listening who feels far from you
right now, who prays into what feels like silence.

185
00:20:06,930 --> 00:20:12,288
Let them know they are in good company. Let
them know the feeling isn't the whole story.

186
00:20:13,070 --> 00:20:19,450
and give us all a little of her stubbornness,
the kind that keeps showing up long after the

187
00:20:19,450 --> 00:20:27,210
feeling leaves. Amen. Teresa of Calcutta is
the patron saint of World Youth Day and of

188
00:20:27,210 --> 00:20:32,510
missionaries. Anyone whose work takes them far
from home to serve people the rest of the world

189
00:20:32,510 --> 00:20:39,114
has stopped noticing, which is exactly what
she spent her own life doing. Her order, the

190
00:20:39,114 --> 00:20:43,834
Missionaries of Charity, is still active today
in more than a hundred countries, still running

191
00:20:43,834 --> 00:20:49,554
homes for the dying and the abandoned the same
way she started them, with almost nothing on

192
00:20:49,554 --> 00:20:56,174
a street in Calcutta. She was canonized in 2016
and her feast day is September 5th, the same

193
00:20:56,174 --> 00:21:03,834
day she died. Well, that is episode 15. If this
one gave you something to sit with, send it

194
00:21:03,834 --> 00:21:10,054
to somebody who needs to hear it. Next week...
We are going back to an unknown saint. Someone

195
00:21:10,054 --> 00:21:15,834
who did something so strange with his own body
that the church almost didn't know what to

196
00:21:15,834 --> 00:21:21,494
do with him. I'm not going to tell you what
it is. You will have to come back next Thursday.

197
00:21:22,274 --> 00:21:27,134
I'm John O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the
porch with me and I will see you next week.