Dark nights...

Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote the following to Jesus:

Jesus, hear my prayer. If this pleases you, if my pain and suffering, my darkness and separation gives you a drop of consolation, my own Jesus do with me as you wish, as long as you wish, without a single glance at my feelings and pain. I am your own. Imprint on my soul and life the sufferings of your heart. Don’t mind my feelings; don’t mind even my pain, if my suffering separation from you brings others to you, and in their love and company you find joy and pleasure.

My Jesus I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer not only now, but through all eternity if this was possible. Your happiness is all that I want. For the rest, please do not take the trouble even if you see me faint with pain. All of this is my will. I want to satiate your thirst with every single drop of blood that you can find in me. Don’t allow me to do you wrong in any way. Take from me the power of hurting you…I am ready to wait for you through all eternity.”

What love lived in the heart of this woman...to lay all she was and ever hoped to be aside to be completely and totally "used up" in the cause of Christ. To pray this prayer not once but repeatedly...even through the suffering and separation. But she did not follow this path for my praise or the praise of any other human. In fact, she would be disappointed to think that we are praising her...she would probably say we missed the point. And praise of Mother Teresa is not the point of this post, it is simply a lesson, a vision of what total commitment looks like.

This "Dark Night of the Soul" was not exclusive to Mother...many have followed Christ with an enduring love...great and small they have chosen the path of pain..

Good Lord, what do you want of me,
What is this wretch to do?
What work is this,
This sinful slave, to do?
Look at me, Sweet Love,
Sweet Love, look at me,
What do You want of me?
– Teresa of Avila

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” — The demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters

"When love and duty are one, then grace is within you" from The Painted Veil

There are those who would ask incredulously...why would you choose this? And I would have to say...it is from pure desire to follow the Beloved...to be devoted to One so far above us that we could never hope to grasp Him.