Christopher West reflects on Mother Teresa’s "Dark Night."
For nearly two years I’ve been reflecting on something I read in an article by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household. I can’t get it out of my head. The article was provocatively titled “The ‘Atheism’ of Mother Teresa” (National Catholic Register, September 9-15, 2007).
It explored the meaning of Mother Teresa’s extended “dark night” of union with Christ in his cry of abandonment from the cross.
Father Cantalamessa wrote of a modern phenomenon he called “atheists in good faith” – people who feel abandoned by God.
Perhaps they would believe if they encountered God, but they encounter only “the silence of God.”
And he observed that the mystics, like Mother Teresa, “exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they ‘sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them’ (see Lk 15:2).” In other words, Mother Teresa lived in solidarity with those who don’t believe.
All the while believing, she “felt” in her own heart what the atheists feel – abandonment by God.
As Father Cantalamessa says, “This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics. There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun.
Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelisers in the postmodern world.
They remind the honest atheists that they are not ‘far from the Kingdom of God’; that it would be enough for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All.”
All of this I find utterly fascinating. But I still haven’t gotten to the line I’ve been pondering for two years now. Here it is: “Karl Rahner was right to say: ‘Christianity of the future will either be mystical or it will not be at all.’”
What does this mean? Are all Christians called to be mystics?
We tend to think of mystics as those “far-out” saints who levitate or bleed with the wounds of Christ. Certainly we are not all called to that.
But we are all called to an “every day” kind of mysticism.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it: “Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ.
“This union is called ‘mystical’ because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all” (No. 2014).
Mystics are not dreamy believers out of touch with reality; they, in fact, are the ones most potently in touch with reality. They are men and women madly in love with God and burning to know him ever more deeply. They are men and women who have heard the divine love song and learned, through many purifying trials and tribulations, to sing back and harmonise with the Trinity.
And, precisely because of their deep union with God, they feel a deep unity with and love for all of mankind. They are ready and willing to suffer for and with others, drawing them through such love into Love itself – or, rather, Love Himself.
Without such love, St. Paul tells us our faith is “nothing” (see 1 Cor 13:1-3). Without such love, Christianity is not Christianity. This, I believe, is what Rahner’s statement means. To be “mystical” means to be transformed by love, and without such transformation there is no future to Christianity.
This also, I believe, shines a light on the importance of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body at this historical moment. John Paul II’s catechesis on the body is mysticism for the modern world.
It brings John of the Cross’s “spousal vision” to the whole church, proposing it in some sense as the normal way for Christians to view reality.
Could it be that, just like the “good atheists,” that there are those who have been swept away by our sex-obsessed culture who are not “far from the Kingdom of God”? Could it be that they only need to “jump” as Father Cantalamessa says, to find themselves on the side of the mystics?
Who knows, maybe one day those now caught up in society’s sex obsession may “pore” over Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, finding “the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun.”