Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta »

Born in Skopje in 1910, MOTHER TERESA joined the Sisters of Loreto in Dublin in 1928 and was sent to India, where she began her novitiate. She taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta from 1931 to 1948, until leaving the Loreto order to begin the Missionaries of Charity. Through her sisters, brothers, and priests, her service of the poorest of the poor spread all around the world. She won many awards, including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. After her death in 1997, the process for her sainthood was quickly begun and she was beatified in 2003.

FR. BRIAN KOLODIEJCHUK, M.C., Ph.D., was born in Winnipeg, Canada. He met Mother Teresa in 1977 and was associated with her until her death in 1997. He joined the Missionaries of Charity Fathers at the time of their foundation in 1984. Fr. Brian is postulator of the Cause of Beatification and Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and director of the Mother Teresa Center.

“If I ever become a Saint–I will surely be one of “darkness.” I will continually be absent from Heaven–to lit the light of those in darkness on earth .”
–Mother 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; 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 letters she wrote to her spiritual advisors over decades, 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. 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.

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 "Put Your Hand in His Hand, and Walk Alone with Him" 13

2 Something Very Beautiful for Jesus 28

3 "Come, Be My Light" 39

4 "To Bring Joy to the Suffering Heart of Jesus" 54

5 "Delay No Longer. Keep Me Not Back" 80

6 To the "Dark Holes" 104

7 "The Dark Night of the Birth of the Society" 123

8 The Thirst of Jesus Crucified 149

9 "My God, How Painful Is This Unknown Pain" 178

10 "I Have Come to Love the Darkness" 208

11 "At His Disposal" 235

12 "God Uses Nothingness to Show His Greatness" 267

13 Radiating Christ 300

Conclusion 334

Appendix A Rules 341

Appendix B Retreat Notes of Mother Teresa, March 29-April 12, 1959 349

Endnotes 363

Acknowledgments 398

Index 401