Two icons of the Church

For South Africans, it is a happy circumstance that the centenary of the birth of Mother Teresa of Calcutta on August 26 should coincide with the tour through this country of the relics of her namesake and inspiration, St Thérèse of Lisieux.

The Canadian author Jacques Gauthier in his 2005 book I Thirst described the 19th century French saint and the 20th century founder of the Missionaries of Charity as “two mirrors who mutually reflect each other, one revealing what at first glance is not obvious to the other”.

Their exterior lives were very different. St Thérèse of Lisieux hardly travelled beyond her region of France (other than a pilgrimage to Rome where she met Pope Leo XIII) before becoming an enclosed Carmelite nun at the age of 15, and died in obscurity at 24.

Mother Teresa left her native Skopje, in present-day Macedonia, as a young woman to first study in Ireland before beginning her mission work in Calcutta and founding a new religious congregation. She travelled widely, met many famous people, and was one of the world’s most iconic individuals when she died on September 5, 1997 at 87.

And yet there is much that connects them. Gauthier in his book points out that both women, in their very different situations, were driven by the “thirst of Jesus” for people to experience his love. Both were distressed by a common indifference towards Jesus, and so were compelled to palliate Jesus’ thirst. Both saw, in St Thérèse’s words, their “vocation as love”.

St Thérèse, who was not considered an intellectual by her contemporaries, did so through her intense prayer life and, more significantly, by writing her posthumously published book The Story of a Soul, a work of such powerful spirituality and holiness that Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in October 1997 – just a few weeks after Mother Teresa’s death.

Mother Teresa lived her commitment to Christ much more publicly, inspiring not so much with words than by concrete action. By living her charism so publicly, Mother Teresa came to define the virtue of caritas and the imperatives of Christ’s love, especially for the poor.

As a public figure, Mother Teresa was hugely admired, and she certainly knew how to market herself and her cause, from the design of her congregation’s distinctive habits to her pragmatic fundraising endeavours (the latter of which have been criticised by some for not being sufficiently discriminating about her association with tryants).

But it is the interior life of these women that provide us with their most profound spiritual legacy. Both St Thérèse and Mother Teresa experienced what St John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul”, feeling an absence of God – not so much in the way an atheist would but as one might experience unrequited love.

Their struggles with faith, in both cases published only after their death, are perhaps the most exemplary constituent in their Christian witness. They encourage Christians who go through what may be tormenting periods of doubt to appreciate that the path to God remains open, that spiritual chaos need not give way to disbelief and the abandonment of faith, that even if they feel the absence of God, he can still work through them.

Far more than by a life of private devotion or public charity, St Thérèse and Mother Teresa through their “dark nights” may counsel the many people who experience spiritual struggles.

Mother Teresa’s centenary and the presence in South Africa of St Thérèse’s relics provide us with an opportunity to reflect on and give thanks for the lives of these two great women of the Church.