Fan letter
Friday, Sep. 02, 2016
By Marie Mischel
Intermountain Catholic
Dear Blessed Teresa of Kolkata,
I just finished reading a book about you (“Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” by Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C.), and I want you to know that you are the first saint I ever wanted to emulate.
As a kid I loved the story of Joan of Arc because she was the only female saint I knew of who wasn’t presented as some kind of pallid virgin whose only goal was “to practice quite hidden little acts of virtue,” in the words of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. (I’ve since learned Thérèse wasn’t the simpering wimp I thought she was, but back then Joan with her sword held much more appeal than Thérèse with her flowers.)
Maybe your story spoke to me because right now I’m searching to make my own mark in the world. Of course I knew who you were while you lived – your herculean efforts to help the poor garnered worldwide recognition – but I thought God’s grace allowed you to float above worldly cares.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. God no doubt did grace you, but how you suffered! The book, a collection of your private writings, reveals you were oh, so human.
I know you never wanted those writings made public. You requested that the private letters you sent, the letters describing your struggles and in particular how for 50 years you felt abandoned by God, be burned, so I hope you forgive me for reading them, but I agree with the unnamed priest quoted in the book’s introduction that “Many people who go through similar trials may gain courage and hope from these letters.”
I haven’t felt the desolation that you did – I pray I never do – but your words do give me courage and hope. I want to do great things, but unlike you I haven’t the fortitude to vow to not refuse God anything. I know what that promise cost you; he has exacted a similar toll from all the saints, and I doubt very much I can pay that kind of price.
And I guess that’s it. I want the glory without the sacrificial goriness; unlike you, I don’t want to be God’s little pencil, I want to be the hand doing the writing. Do I understand that makes me want to play God? Yes. Do I realize how ungodlike I truly am? Yes, and here is where your words give me hope that perhaps one day I might succeed in submitting to him, because even you, saint of the gutters, admitted that many times you struggled to do his will.
What really prompted me to write you, though, are these words of yours: “If I ever become a saint, I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from heaven to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
I know it’s extremely presumptuous of me, but given that you’re going to be canonized on Sept. 4, I was wondering if, while you’re out and about down here, you might light my light? I want greatness, but that of the world, not of God, and yet when I read of the people you touched, I realize that even more than fortune and fame I want to have someone, even one person, say of me as the man whose story is told at the end of the book said of you: “The light she lit in my life is still burning.”
I promise, if you share your flame with me, I’ll do my best to keep it lit, and to pass it on.
Sincerely,
Marie
Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic.
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