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Vatican City, Jun 7, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- There are many things about Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta that could be called heroic – her tireless service to the world’s most rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live the Gospel, just to name a couple.

But the priest who oversaw her path to sainthood said that for him, one thing stands out above all the rest: her experience of spiritual darkness and what she described as feeling totally abandoned by God for the majority of her life.

“The single most heroic thing is exactly her darkness. That pure living, that pure, naked faith,” Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator for Mother Teresa’s canonization cause, told CNA in an interview. Fr. Kolodiejchuk is a priest of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, founded by Mother Teresa in 1989.

By undergoing the depth and duration of the desolation she experienced and doing everything that she did for others in spite of it, “that’s really very heroic,” he said.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910 in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Sisters of Loretto at the age of 17, but later left after she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and to live among the poor.

She went on to found several communities of both active and contemplative Missionaries of Charity, which include religious sisters, brothers, and priests.

The first community of active sisters was founded in 1950. An order of active brothers was founded nearly 20 years later in 1968. Then two contemplative orders came, one of women (in 1976) and one of men (in 1979).

In 1989 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers was established, and is a clerical religious institute of diocesan right whose members make promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.

Additionally, an order of lay missionaries was also founded in 1984, and several movements who organize various works of charity have also been born as part of the Missionaries of Charity spiritual family.

One of the first steps in declaring someone a saint is to determine their heroic virtue. Fr. Kolodiejchuk said that Mother Teresa’s entire life was lived heroically, which was clear from what he had seen firsthand and heard from the testimonies of others, even though he himself has only been a part of the Missionaries of Charity family for 20 years.

He said the most heroic aspect of Mother Teresa’s life and vocation is the more than 50 years of darkness and abandonment she felt after receiving what she termed “a call within a call” to leave the Sisters of Loretto and found the Missionaries of Charity.

Although the Albanian nun is always seen beaming and smiling brightly in photos, she experienced a profound internal desolation during which she felt silence and rejection from God, who seemed distant.

In a letter to her spiritual director in 1957, Mother Teresa wrote that “I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer. Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.”

“Love – the word – it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul,” she said.

Mother Teresa had prayed fervently to share in Jesus’ suffering, and many, including her spiritual director, believed her feelings of rejection and abandonment to be a mirror of Christ’s own experience of loneliness and desolation during his Passion and death.

Because of the depth and duration of Mother Teresa’s spiritual desert, many have hailed her as a great mystic when it comes to topic of spiritual darkness.

Fr. Kolodiejchuk himself said Mother Teresa was “a great mystic, but also very concrete, very down to earth.”

The priest had met Mother Teresa in his early 20s while attending the vows of his sister, who had joined the active branch of the Missionaries of Charity sisters. He joined the order of priests a year later.

A lot of people “think that saints are somewhere in the mystical clouds,” he said, but cautioned that this wasn’t true of Mother Teresa, who was spiritual, but also observant and active in the lives of others.

From the first moment he met her, of Mother Teresa’s most distinguishing qualities was “this sense that she really was Mother,” he said, explaining that being a mother was something important to her, and was the only thing she was ever called.

When Mother Teresa was first elected superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, her immediate response after receiving congratulations, he noted, was to say “Oh that means nothing, the title. No, I want to be a mother.”

The nun also placed a heavy emphasis on God’s tenderness, Fr. Kolodiejchuk said, recalling that “tender” was one of her favorite words – even more so than mercy.

“She would talk more about Jesus’ tender love and mercy; his thoughtfulness, his presence, his compassion…So mercy was a word in her vocabulary, but with this quality especially of tenderness.”

“Even in the darkness she still had an intimate sense of God’s tender love for us,” he said, and recited a prayer that Mother Teresa would often teach and have others repeat: “Jesus in my heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I love you.”

The priest said that her canonization during the Jubilee of Mercy was providential since the core mission of the Missionaries of Charity is to respond to Chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, which lists the works of mercy.

He noted how the day of Mother Teresa’s canonization also marked a special jubilee day for workers and volunteers of mercy.

Given the work the Missionaries of Charity do, “it’s appropriate” that the nun would become a patroness for all who carry out the same type of activities, he said.

Part of the reason Mother Teresa is such a strong example for the world today, Fr. Kolodiejchuk believes, is because “people like to see,” and the work the Missionaries do is something visible that others can easily touch and participate in, no matter what religion they profess.

“Mother was a great believer in that we receive in giving. So there’s something attractive about the work. And then you receive by sharing in it,” he said.

This article was originally published on CNA April 4, 2016.

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Vatican City, Jun 7, 2017 / 04:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said that one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith is that we have a God we are taught to call ‘Father’ – a father who never leaves us and who we can call on in prayer at any moment.

“The entire mystery of Christian prayer is summed up here, in this word: to have the courage to call God by the name of Father,” the Pope said June 7.

He pointed to Chapter 11 of the Gospel of Luke, in which the evangelist provides a somewhat shortened version of the “Our Father” prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and which begins with the simple invocation: “Father.”

The fatherhood of God, which Francis called “the source of our hope,” formed the basis of his general audience catechesis. Addressing crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope  immediately recalled the parable of the “merciful father,” also known as the Prodigal Son.

The father in this story, he said, does not punish his son for his arrogance, but still gives him his share of the inheritance, later welcoming him back home even after he had squandered it.

“The father does not apply the criteria of human justice,” the Pope said, “but first he feels the need to forgive, and with his embrace makes the child understand that in all that long absence he missed him; he is painfully missed by his father’s love.”

“God is Father, Jesus says, but not in the human way, because there is no father in this world who would behave like the protagonist of this parable,” the Pope said, adding “What an unfathomable mystery is a God that nourishes this kind of love towards his children!”

However, despite this familiarity, to call God by the name of “Father” is not necessarily something we merit or understand, he said. In fact, sometimes it seems like we should use only the highest titles to address God, because it would be more respectful of his divinity.

“Instead, invoking him as ‘Father’ puts us in a relationship of trust with Him, as a child who turns to his dad, knowing he is loved and cared for by him,” Francis said, adding that despite the grand mystery and greatness of God, which can often make us feel small, we are not afraid.

This concept isn’t easy “to welcome in our human soul,” he said, noting that even the women who after the Resurrection first found the angel and the empty tomb of Jesus ran away, “because they were filled with fright and astonishment.”

“But Jesus reveals to us that God is a good Father, and He tells us, ‘Do not be afraid,’” Francis said, adding that perhaps this is the reason the Apostle Paul doesn’t translate into Greek the Aramaic word, “abba.”  

This phrase, he said, is “a term more intimate than ‘father,’” and is sometimes translated as “papa” or “daddy.”

Going on, Pope Francis said the Gospel reveals to us that no matter what, God the Father is there for us. When we need help, Jesus tells us to turn to the Father with confidence, never closing ourselves off, or becoming resigned, he said.

“All of our necessities, from the most obvious and every day – such as food, health and work, to being forgiven and sustained in temptations – are not the mirror of our solitude: there is a Father who is always there looking with love, and who surely does not abandon us,” he said.

The Pope concluded by making a proposal to the crowd before leading them in praying the ‘Our Father.’

“Each of us has so many problems and needs,” he said. “Let us think a little, in silence, about these problems and these needs. And all together, with confidence and hope, we pray, Our Father…”

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Vatican City, Jun 6, 2017 / 02:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Tuesday that truthfulness is the weapon against the temptation of hypocrisy, which destroys the community with lies and flattery.

“The hypocrite is capable of destroying a community. While speaking gently, he ruinously judges a person. He is a killer,” said the Pope during his homily at Mass June 6 at the chapel of the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.

Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel passage in which the Pharisees and Herodians, who tried to ensnare Christ with his words, began by flattery.

“The hypocrite always uses language to flatter,” said the Pope, explaining that they will exaggerate the truth, “feeding into one’s vanity.”

He continued to the say that hypocrites are two-faced, and “the language of hypocrisy is the language of deceit, it is the same language the serpent used with Eve.”

He gave an example of a priest he met who “drank up all the flattery,” and he said that flattery is initiated by bad intentions. He said the Pharisees were trying to hide their true intentions, hoping to test Christ by asking him, “is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”

However, he said reality and truth are the tools to combat such hypocrisy, and it is Christ who exposes a lie with reality.

“Jesus always responds to hypocrites and ideologists with reality: ‘this is the reality; everything else is either hypocrisy or ideology.’”

He continued to say that “the reality was that the coin carried the image of Caesar.”

Hypocrisy not only destroys community, but he said it also “tears to pieces the personality and the soul of a person.”

Pope Francis ended his homily asking the Lord to strengthen a commitment to truth by the members of the Church.

“Let us ask the Lord to guard us from this vice, to help us be truthful, and if this is not possible to keep silent – but never to be a hypocrite.”

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