Here are the words of one of the world's greatest lovers as she anguished over her greatest love: "The more I want him, the less I am wanted... emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."
We all face pain and suffering in our lives, but unrequited love can seem like the most painful of all.
It's remarkable then that this great lover, Mother Teresa, despite perceiving God's abandonment for much of her life, obtained the rarest form of peace. Indeed, on account of her afflictions her peace was more profoundly purchased than the most stable peace gained by security, silence or solid affections.
From where does such profound peace come?
Thanksgiving demonstrated at least one thing that separates Mother Teresa from the rest of us: constant gratitude. We officially show our gratitude once per year-mainly to free-market capitalism-by buying and consuming as much as we can. For the consecrated religious, gratitude is a bit different. They give thanks every day because for them life is a supreme gift of love from God, who always desires their well-being.
Thus every suffering and sorrow-even Mother Teresa's feelings of rejection from her Love-is an opportunity to challenge, fortify and sanctify oneself. And God will help. In this context, suffering is suffused with meaning because suffering becomes a positive response to God, and suffering well becomes a form of service.
But there is a problem with this way of thinking. If we are God's servants, then we are also suffering an eternal sort of bondage. In a world where freedom seems the highest virtue, how can that put anyone at peace?
To answer this problem, we must go back to gratitude. As a husband is bonded to his wife-and graciously serves her-because he loves her, Mother Teresa served her "spouse" because she was infinitely grateful to Him. We find joy in serving those to whom we are indebted, and so bondage is not necessarily a loss of freedom.
Instead, bondage to God necessitates a radically different conception of freedom. It's a way of viewing the world in terms of gifts that are received and their attendant duties, not in terms of rights that are owed and their inevitable violations. The one breeds joy and thanksgiving for the good things of life; the other breeds selfishness and resentment because of the good things that life lacks.
Mother Teresa gave her body back to God (its true owner) as a living sacrifice; the materialist views his body as a "mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless," in the words of Pope Benedict XVI. Thus the body becomes a slave to biological processes and passions that, unlike the soul, are anything but free.
It is not "human rights" that free us, but the real capacity and grave obligation to do objective good. Freedom is charity and service. The world is an arena in which we are given the dignity to exercise our capacity for good, the dignity of being not merely effects but causes, if even by simple prayer.
This freedom to do good leads some, like Mother Teresa, to suffer their entire lives in service to others. To them, the patient endurance of suffering is not, I should say, merely a gift to God; it is also a way to profoundly unite with Him, by sacrificing in the selfsame way that He sacrificed. Paradoxically, suffering can be a gift from God, a life of service and sacrifice the most meaningful of all. Like Mother Teresa, it brings one full circle to gratitude and peace: "I have begun to love my darkness [as] a very small part of Jesus' darkness and pain on the earth."
We now approach Christmas, the annual display of national worship-mostly at the altar of the market-where we observe our sacred duty to buy and sell. But I think what's missing during this frantic shopping season is peace, real peace-the sort built up by the circle of interweaving gratitude, service, suffering and peace.
Mother Teresa accepted her place in life without resentment for her trials, but with unending gratitude, with humble service and with love. Her example teaches us that, contrary to the definitions of the modern world, suffering is not opposed to happiness. He who thinks otherwise will never be at peace because he will always suffer.
At the end, this was her true freedom; because chains no longer mattered to her. Her life was no longer a struggle to appease her passions; she had abandoned herself completely in God. With eternal bondage came eternal peace. For Truth, the good book reminds us, not uninhibited rights, will make us free.
Justin Noia is a Pratt junior. This is his final column of the semster.
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