Mother Teresa was one of those rare figures in history who enjoyed a wide and solid reputation of holiness during her lifetime. She became-for Catholics, Christians, and those of other faiths or even of none-a symbol of kindness, compassion, and tender care of the poorest people throughout the world. Known as a joyful and generous soul, Mother Teresa inspired countless persons to experience the "joy of loving," as she liked to say, through their own acts of love and compassion. It thus came as a total surprise to everyone, including the members of her own religious family, the Missionaries of Charity, that Mother Teresa experienced nearly fifty years of what she called "the darkness." When a book of her private letters, Come, be My Light, was published in 2007, it caused a sensation. It received worldwide media attention, including as the cover story of Time magazine. People struggled to understand it; many misunderstood it, some entirely! As the president of Ave Maria University, Jim Towey, tells us in the introduction, many questions abound about Mother Teresa's darkness: "What are we to make of the spiritual darkness that enshrouded Mother Teresa so tightly? Could the words and experiences of this little Albanian woman with no advanced formal education have anything to say to the challenges the twenty-first century presents?" Ave Maria University gathered theologians to begin answering these questions and others. The resulting symposium provided the contents of this book. The first such assembly of scholarly work on the topic, Mother Teresa and the Mystics offers readers the opportunity to enter much more deeply into the interior-even mystical-world of St. Teresa of Calcutta.

During her lifelong service to the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa became an icon of compassion to people of all religions, and none. Her selfless commitment to the care of the sick and the dying, as well as to thousands of others who no one else was prepared to help, has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world. Yet this impressive collection of her writings shows a different and unexpected picture of the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her absolute conviction that she was doing God's will is well known but what is a revelation is the discovery that she fulfilled her mission in spite of feeling a chasm of spiritual emptiness within her, which lasted for decades. This book is a moving chronicle of her spiritual journey and it reveals the secrets she shared only with her closest confidants. It also illustrates how the experience of an agonizing sense of loss need not hold anyone back from doing something extraordinary with their lives.

This historic work reveals the inner spiritual life of one of the most beloved and important religious figures in history.
During her lifelong service to the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa became an icon of compassion to people of all religions; her extraordinary contributions to the care of the sick, the dying, and thousands of others nobody else was prepared to look after has been recognized and acclaimed throughout the world. Little is known, however, about her own spiritual heights or her struggles. This collection of her writing and reflections, almost all of which have never been made public before, sheds light on Mother Teresa's interior life in a way that reveals the depth and intensity of her holiness for the first time.
Compiled and presented by Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., who knew Mother Teresa for twenty years and is the postulator for her cause for sainthood and director of the Mother Teresa Center, MOTHER TERESA brings together letters she wrote to her spiritual advisors over decades. A moving chronicle of her spiritual journey--including moments, indeed years, of utter desolation--these letters reveal the secrets she shared only with her closest confidants. She emerges as a classic mystic whose inner life burned with the fire of charity and whose heart was tested and purified by an intense trial of faith, a true dark night of the soul.
Published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of her death, MOTHER TERESA is an intimate portrait of a woman whose life and work continue to be admired by millions of people.