Diagnosing Mother Teresa

[tzcho2]

Never said you did.
READ ny post again . . .

Pardon me, ya, your hate-filled slander was much worse.

 

[BreadOfLife]

Pardon me, ya, your hate-filled slander was much worse.

Like what, for example??

 

[illini1959]

And this is precisely why I said you conveniently cherry-picked what she said instead of taking her comments in context.

She merely stated that she didn’t shove the Gospel down people’s throats and wasn’t an orator – but instead chose to SHOW them Christ through her actions. That’s what we’re SUPPOSED to do. If you have the gift for speaking or writing – more power to you – but many don’t.

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying, “Preach the Gospel daily. When necessary, use words.”

THIS was the way Mother Teresa spread the Gospel and NO, it isn’t in “direct opposition”to Scripture. NOWHERE does Jesus ever state that we are ONLY to preach the Gospel.

The point isn't whether or not she was an orator or that she showed anything through her actions.

Here's the quote again - "“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.” (Pages 81-82)

Buddhists? Agnostics? Really? You can include 'catholics and protestants' too, if they haven't received Christ.

This is not the way to salvation. That's the point.

 

[tzcho2]

Like what, for example??

oh pahleeze , which thread ? how many pages.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

A spiritual director is one who you pour your heart out to. If you are experiencing dryness, you admit it. If you are feeling abandoned by God, you admit it.

Some of us go in and out of some light drynesses, as God works inside us to remove our dross.

Others face a much longer second fast in spirit and it is excruciating. God often gives spiritual directors who are not adept and do not understand and these men and women are often caused great pain by these directors who shouldn't be directing.

There is a long history of these inept directors, appointed by men. Teresa of Avila was also told she had a demon. John of the Cross was treated badly and roughly even as he was dying. So Mother Teresa is in great company.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Mother Teresa was in that greater fast of spirit. She submitted to it or else she would have turned back to the world for comfort.

 

[tzcho2]

2 Timothy 4:4 “And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

 

[stunnedbygrace]

The true fast, in spirit and truth is not a fable. Just as the true baptism, in spirit and truth, is not a fable.

To fast and to have a water baptism are pictures of God's work in us by the Spirit. There is a physical fast and a physical baptism that men do, and then there is a fast and a baptism in spirit, by the Spirit.

 

[tzcho2]

The Holy GOD by the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible and He predicted these times.

 

[Phoneman777]

.
If anyone should have been on intimate terms with God and with His son
Jesus Christ in the last century, surely it had to be Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu
(a.k.a. Mother Teresa) but curiously, that wasn't the case. It turns out
Teresa was a remarkable actor. Her public image bore no resemblance
whatsoever to the secret life of her inner being. Below are some complaints
she expressed in private letters to spiritual counselors recorded in:

Mother Teresa / Come Be My Light
The Private Writings of the "Saint of Calcutta"
Edited with commentary by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C.
ISBN 978-0-385-52037-9

"I am told God loves me; and yet the reality of darkness & coldness &
emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."

"The place of God in my soul is blank-- There is no God in me"

"I feel He does not want me, He is not there, God does not want me"

"When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting
emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my
very soul. How painful is this unknown pain-- I have no faith."

Teresa also complained of feeling abandoned by Christ-- referring to him as
"the absent one"

Teresa was never really convinced there's a God out there.

"The damned of Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment
with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I
feel that God does not want me, that God is not God; and that He does not
really exist."

At one point Teresa actually prayed thus:

"If there be God; please forgive me."

A prayer that begins with "If there be God" is the prayer of an agnostic;
which Webster's defines as one who is not committed to believing in either
the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. According to Jas 1:5-8,
agnostic prayers are pings.

To her credit, Teresa wanted a God to be out there, but her utter failure to
feel even the slightest glimmer of the Lord's presence prevented her from
being sure about it.
_

It's because she of the church to which she belonged. She is credited with saying, "No Mary, no Jesus" which shows that the emphasis of her faith was misplaced. Why do catholic leaders insist on leading the faithful to look to the priesthood, the saints, even the pope, for that which only Jesus can provide, which leaves them in despair? Heaven rejoices with each drop of the Euphrates drying up as God's people hear and heed the call to "come out of Babylon, My people".

Show me a Christian whose gratitude for the message of the Cross exceeds the vast majority of us, and I'll show you a former catholic.

 

[BreadOfLife]

The point isn't whether or not she was an orator or that she showed anything through her actions.

Here's the quote again - "“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.” (Pages 81-82)

Buddhists? Agnostics? Really? You can include 'catholics and protestants' too, if they haven't received Christ.

This is not the way to salvation. That's the point.

Mother Teresa didn't stray from Catholic teaching on this matter.
In the document, Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (Outside the Church There is No Salvation), this issue is addressed:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."338


Don't be so quick to place yourself ABOVE ignorant non-believers. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for doing the EXACT same thing.

John 9:40-41
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

I would listen to that if I were you . . .

 

[BreadOfLife]

oh pahleeze , which thread ? how many pages.

You were talking about THIS thread, so why don't you start here??

 

[BreadOfLife]

2 Timothy 4:4 “And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

And the prophecy about the Pharisees can be just as easily directed towards Protestantism:
Matt. 15:8-9
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.’”

 

[BreadOfLife]

It's because she of the church to which she belonged. She is credited with saying, "No Mary, no Jesus" which shows that the emphasis of her faith was misplaced. Why do catholic leaders insist on leading the faithful to look to the priesthood, the saints, even the pope, for that which only Jesus can provide, which leaves them in despair? Heaven rejoices with each drop of the Euphrates drying up as God's people hear and heed the call to "come out of Babylon, My people".

Show me a Christian whose gratitude for the message of the Cross exceeds the vast majority of us, and I'll show you a former catholic.

And the king of half-truths strikes again . . .

You only got HALF of that quote right. It is a play on words.:
"No Mary, no Jesus.
Know Mary, know Jesus"

YOU claim to be a servant of Christ.
She was His FIRST servant - and the only person in the history of the world who carried and gave birth to GOD.

Show me a Christian whose gratitude for the message of Christ exceeds the vast majority of us, and I'll show you a faithful Catholic.

 

[Webers_Home]

.
Rome didn't recruit Teresa to run an operation in India. No, it was wholly her
own idea; which was based entirely upon some "Interior Imaginative
Locutions" she claims to have received from Christ himself beginning in Sept
of 1946 and ending some time in 1947.

An I.I.L. is neither an apparition nor a vision: it's an imagination, i.e. a
mental fantasy. It's neither visual nor audio. Teresa never actually heard
anything with her own ears nor saw an appearance with her own eyes.

Curiously (or maybe it's far more accurate to say coincidently) when
Teresa's superiors finally caved to her incessant letter-writing campaign and
gave her permission to proceed, the I.I.L.s stopped and she never heard
from "Jesus" again for virtually the next five decades-- which ultimately
caused her an unbearable amount of inner anguish that finally led the poor
woman to doubt not only the validity of her mission, but also to seriously
doubt the very existence of God.

Well; had I been Teresa's designated spiritual counselor I would've urged
her to never, ever, trust your imaginations are messages from God because
they could very easily be nothing more than an intense daydream, or maybe
something even much worse; for example like schizophrenia.

Anyway, Teresa's locutions didn't pan out. In no time, all I.I.L. contact with
Jesus ceased and she began referring to him as the absent one. Plus she
reported that the place of God in her soul was blank and there was no God in
her.

Well; again, had I been Teresa's designated spiritual counselor I would've
reminded her that the bodies of Christ's followers are God's habitation. He's
supposed to be in every believer; even the lowly ones who don't count for
much in the grand scheme of things.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in
you, whom you have received from God?" (1Cor 6:19)

Now just because Christ's followers cannot sense God's presence in their
body, doesn't indicate He's not there. This is one of the supernatural
elements of Christianity that have to be taken on faith. Had Teresa's
counselors told her so they could've spared that poor woman literally
decades of anguish.

She also reported being instructed that God loved her; and yet the reality of
darkness & coldness & emptiness was so great that nothing touched her
soul. Well; again, as her designated spiritual counselor, I would've pointed to
Jesus' statement, which reads:

"The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come
to believe that I came from God." (John 16:27)

Is Jesus' statement true? Well of course it is. So regardless of whether
Teresa felt anything touching her soul, she should've taken it on faith that
the Father loved her: and let it go at that.

Teresa's labeling Jesus as the absent one was horribly unjustified because he
promised:

"I will not abandon you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18)

"Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)

Now, that brings me back to an earlier reference:

"Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in faith. Test yourselves.
Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? --unless, of course, you fail
the test." (2Cor 13:5)

Teresa let her feelings override her knowledge; i.e. Teresa's feelings became
her faith rather than confidence in what the Bible says in print. That, in a
nutshell, is precisely where the poor woman ran aground and made
shipwreck of her spiritual condition.
_

 

[stunnedbygrace]

I think we should be careful not to look down our nose at another person's struggles of trust. Especially if we ourselves have finally got to a place of radical trust.

I'm not saying we all need to understand. There are some poor souls who go through a very painful trial where they are greatly concerned about blasphemy and they are assailed by awful thoughts. I don't understand their trial because my trials were different. I should never be the one to counsel them. Instead, a counselor should be obtained for them who understands this trial, preferably because they experienced it.

I do happen to understand Teresa's...peevishness, and feeling of being abandoned for a long length of time. I understand this trial. I came through it.

We need to be gentle and caring with others and their own struggles of faith. Its easy to chide them and say they should not be struggling over what we ourselves have had no struggle with in our own race of trust.

 

[tzcho2]

[QUOTE="BreadOfLife, post: 589058, member: 7345"]And the prophecy about the Pharisees can be just as easily directed towards Protestantism:
Matt. 15:8-9
‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;in vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines human precepts.’”[/QUOTE]
That opinion is rcc propaganda from and apologist of the Rcc. The Rcc has always claimed IT is THE church & through IT'S Religious writings & Traditions holds the keys to heaven. I've heard it out of the Priest's mouths many times.

 

[tzcho2]

.
Rome didn't recruit Teresa to run an operation in India. No, it was wholly her
own idea; which was based entirely upon some "Interior Imaginative
Locutions" she claims to have received from Christ himself beginning in Sept
of 1946 and ending some time in 1947.

An I.I.L. is neither an apparition nor a vision: it's an imagination, i.e. a
mental fantasy. It's neither visual nor audio. Teresa never actually heard
anything with her own ears nor saw an appearance with her own eyes.

Curiously (or maybe it's far more accurate to say coincidently) when
Teresa's superiors finally caved to her incessant letter-writing campaign and
gave her permission to proceed, the I.I.L.s stopped and she never heard
from "Jesus" again for virtually the next five decades-- which ultimately
caused her an unbearable amount of inner anguish that finally led the poor
woman to doubt not only the validity of her mission, but also to seriously
doubt the very existence of God.

Well; had I been Teresa's designated spiritual counselor I would've urged
her to never, ever, trust your imaginations are messages from God because
they could very easily be nothing more than an intense daydream, or maybe
something even much worse; for example like schizophrenia.

Anyway, Teresa's locutions didn't pan out. In no time, all I.I.L. contact with
Jesus ceased and she began referring to him as the absent one. Plus she
reported that the place of God in her soul was blank and there was no God in
her.

Well; again, had I been Teresa's designated spiritual counselor I would've
reminded her that the bodies of Christ's followers are God's habitation. He's
supposed to be in every believer; even the lowly ones who don't count for
much in the grand scheme of things.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in
you, whom you have received from God?" (1Cor 6:19)

Now just because Christ's followers cannot sense God's presence in their
body, doesn't indicate He's not there. This is one of the supernatural
elements of Christianity that have to be taken on faith. Had Teresa's
counselors told her so they could've spared that poor woman literally
decades of anguish.

She also reported being instructed that God loved her; and yet the reality of
darkness & coldness & emptiness was so great that nothing touched her
soul. Well; again, as her designated spiritual counselor, I would've pointed to
Jesus' statement, which reads:

"The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come
to believe that I came from God." (John 16:27)

Is Jesus' statement true? Well of course it is. So regardless of whether
Teresa felt anything touching her soul, she should've taken it on faith that
the Father loved her: and let it go at that.

Teresa's labeling Jesus as the absent one was horribly unjustified because he
promised:

"I will not abandon you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18)

"Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)

Now, that brings me back to an earlier reference:

"Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in faith. Test yourselves.
Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? --unless, of course, you fail
the test." (2Cor 13:5)

Teresa let her feelings override her knowledge; i.e. Teresa's feelings became
her faith rather than confidence in what the Bible says in print. That, in a
nutshell, is precisely where the poor woman ran aground and made
shipwreck of her spiritual condition.
_

Yes , by her own testimony, beliefs, words & actions towards non-believers i.e. hindus etc.. in her care telling them it was good enough to be "good hindus" , her belief that suffering was so godly that it was enough to bring people closer to God. She clearly didn't rightly divide the scriptures. There is no evidence that she gave the people in her care the true gospel that saves and her opinion that being a good person, aka a good hindu, or buddhist or whatever was sufficient, it seems evident by all reports about her, & from her no evidence that she ever did hear the true gospel of Jesus and have faith alone in Jesus. Faith in Jesus + something else is not the gospel according to the scriptures. Another gospel does not =Salvation that would be a false gospel. It must be faith alone in Jesus as the Son of God, His blessed birth as the Son of God, His blessed perfect sinless life, ministry, His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection & His conquering return, that Jesus is Lord. That Jesus is the name above all names & there is only one mediator between God and man, that man Jesus Christ who alone paid for our sins. Only complete belief aka faith in Jesus victory on Calvary, His death and resurrection saves us. If people believe they must work to earn salvation, or pray to anyone else for help, etc.. then that is not complete faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:10
“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;”

 

[Enoch111]

She clearly didn't rightly divide the scriptures.

There is no point in berating Mother Teresa.

1. She was a good Catholic.
2. She was made a Catholic saint in September 2016.
2. Catholics are not concerned about rightly dividing Scripture.
3. She was involved with humanitarian efforts for most of her life.
4. Only God knows her heart and we should not go there.
5. End of story.

 

[tzcho2]

There is no point in berating Mother Teresa.

1. She was a good Catholic.
2. She was made a Catholic saint in September 2016.
2. Catholics are not concerned about rightly dividing Scripture.
3. She was involved with humanitarian efforts for most of her life.
4. Only God knows her heart and we should not go there.
5. End of story.

You can kindly stop with falsely accusing me. If people are going to be making excuses for her words which speak against what Christ Jesus taught, and fawning over her celebrity or complacently pandering to the Roman Catholic disinformation and mythology that surrounded her life, -- I will counter it if you don't mind or if you do, with the facts that I have found. The scripture says by their fruit--clearly the fruit that she had was not that of a born again Christian.
The Bible teaches us we are supposed to be trying to give the one gospel message that saves and thereby pluck people out of the fire --not carelessly, helping them stumble into it, which is what any Christian is doing if they support the false teachings of the RCC and it's well- funded & clever propaganda machine.