In this religious milieu, she discerned her missionary vocation and left home in September of 1928 with the desire “of saving many souls.” Her early magnanimity is also expressed in her desire for martyrdom that she shared with her confessor and advisor in Skopje, Fr. Thérèse (beatified in 1923, canonized in 1925, and declared co-patroness of the missions in 1927). In her teen years, Mother Teresa came under the influence of her future patron saint, St. Thérèse de Lisieux and this encouraged her to think of becoming a nun and a missionary: Here she became inspired by the story of the recently canonized St. Next, he traces how Mother Teresa was an active member of a parish run by Jesuits at the parish. Brian first speaks of the deep influence exercised on Mother Teresa by the faith of her mother. The family lived in the city of Scopje, Albania. She had two older siblings and her parents were Nicola and Frana Bojaxhiu. Mother Teresa was born on 26th August 1910 and was baptized as Gonxha Agnes. I use this source to register some of the major events in Mother Teresa’s spiritual journey. Brian Kolodiejchuk both in the lecture he delivered as one of the talks in our series of public lectures. In reflecting on the legacy of Mother Teresa I begin by referring the work of Fr. So it is that I pursue these links in what follows. It seems to me that this theme of spiritual solidarity with the poor introduces an aspect of Mother Teresa’s life that brings her closer to liberation theologians and other theologians who link a concern for the poor with efforts to influence social structures. Mother Teresa came to understand her darkness as “the spiritual side of my work” and is unique in the way that she seems to have experienced a darkness that she understood as a solidarity with the poor and with Christ who continues to be crucified in the poor. More recently, however, even among those who have an understanding of how many great mystics have passed through a “dark night of the soul” there are particular characteristics of Mother Teresa’s experience that continue to surprise. At first this book was met with some poorly informed reactions in the world press asserting that Mother Teresa did not believe in what she was doing. This book quotes her own spiritual writings to reveal that Mother Teresa experienced a terrible suffering and a terrible “darkness” in prayer through all the years of her leading her Missionaries of Charity in their impressive work. Brian Kolodiejchuk MC, Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, the Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, published in 2007, helped many to reflect in a new way about Mother Teresa. Recently, however, new aspects of the life of Mother Teresa have begun to emerge and new reflections are occurring about the significance of her life and witness that may be beginning to bridge this apparent divide.Ībove all, the book by Fr. No one questions the heroic commitment of Mother Teresa to the poor, but the term “preferential option for the poor” tended to be associated with liberation theologians who would emphasize that identifying with the poor should proceed to action to try to redress the causes of poverty, not least issues of social injustice. One does not tend to associate Mother Teresa with what has come to be known as a preferential option for the poor in theology. Mother Teresa and a Preferential Option for the Poor in Theological Reflection Excerpts from a talk given during a course of public lectures on Mother Teresa, March-April, 2011 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome.
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