The Secret Suffering of Blessed Mother Teresa

The book  Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light will be released on Sept. 19th, but is available for preorder now.

From Time Magazine:

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

Vatican Airlines?

From the BBC:

The Vatican is to launch a low-cost charter flight service to transport pilgrims to holy sites worldwide.

The inaugural flight on 27 August will go from Rome to Lourdes in France.

A small Italian airline, Mistral, will provide the planes, with the interiors decorated with sacred inscriptions such as: “I search for your face, Lord.”

Other destinations could include Fatima in Portugal and Santiago di Compostela in Spain, the Holy Land, Poland and a Catholic shrine in Mexico.

The vicar of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, is expected to be on the first flight to Lourdes, which already attracts eight million pilgrims each year.

“Mommy! Do you see? The statue of Mary is smiling.”

A grace-filled moment from Minnesota Mom:

We really do like Mary around here.

So when the opportunity came to see the Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima, we took it, even though it meant making our way into the city and dealing with the traffic, the parking, and the organizational feat of getting my four children out the door. (I only had four at that point. Somehow it often seemed like more.)

The Cathedral was full-to-bursting with hundreds of little Catholic school kids from all over the Twin Cities and beyond. Every last uniformed one of them had assembled to pray, sing, and peer curiously at the mystical, miraculous presence at the front of the church.

After the liturgy we were invited to move closer, and so my own small group of five approached the statue. We waited quietly while a little girl in a blue uniform got her picture taken with Mary. Suddenly I saw the somber expression on Our Blessed Mother’s face become a broad, beaming smile. I assure you that I did! And then, in the midst of this surreal, is-this-really-happening? moment, my oldest son grabbed my arm and exclaimed:

“Mommy! Do you see? The statue of Mary is smiling!”

To their dismay, none of my other children saw this. The story, though, is retold often—especially on these beautiful Marian feasts when we are reminded of the power of her intercession, and of her love.

St. Rose of Lima

From the Office of Readings, words from St. Rose:

Our Lord and Saviour lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase. Let men take care not to stray and be deceived. This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven”.
When I heard these words, a strong force came upon me and seemed to place me in the middle of a street, so that I might say in a loud voice to people of every age, sex and status: “Hear, O people; hear, O nations. I am warning you about the commandment of Christ by using words that came from his own lips: We cannot obtain grace unless we suffer afflictions.
We must heap trouble upon trouble to attain a deep participation in the divine nature, the glory of the sons of God and perfect happiness of soul”.
That same force strongly urged me to proclaim the beauty of divine grace. It pressed me so that my breath came slow and forced me to sweat and pant. I felt as if my soul could no longer be kept in the prison of the body, but that it had burst its chains and was free and alone and was going very swiftly through the whole world saying:
“If only mortals would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble, how precious. How many riches it hides within itself, how many joys and delights! Without doubt they would devote all their care and concern to winning for themselves pains and afflictions. All men throughout the world would seek trouble, infirmities and torments, instead of good fortune, in order to attain the unfathomable treasure of grace. This is the reward and the final gain of patience. No one would complain about his cross or about troubles that may happen to him, if he would come to know the scales on which they are weighed when they are distributed to men”.

World’s Oldest Father

#21 at age 90, from the Daily Mail:

Indian farmer Nanu Ram Jogi, who is married to his fourth wife, boasts he does not want to stop, and plans to continue producing children until he is 100.

Mr Jogi admits he is not certain how many children his series of four wives have borne him – but counts at least 12 sons and nine daughters and 20 grandchildren.