"It would be hard to argue that Therese of Lisieux, or Mother Teresa, lacked a 'personal relationship with God.' And yet, for both of them, that relationship was often experienced as loneliness and abandonment. Therese said she had been 'assailed by the worst temptations of atheism.' Mother Teresa wrote that she experienced 'just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.' She wrote of a feeling of 'terrible separation.' She lived in the moment of Christ's cry from the Cross: 'My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?'
"And yet both Therese and Teresa spoke of God as someone real and known, someone Whose withdrawal left salt water in the footprints of His past consolations. All Christians must seek to enter into the life of Christ, to be baptized into His death so that we might rise in His life; Mother Teresa received the terrible gift of being baptized into His crucifixion. That is one way to have a relationship with God. It is a real gift, just as martyrdom is a gift."
— Eve Tushnet, from her outstanding InsideCatholic essay "Defining the Relationship"
FURTHER READING: Via Amazon.com, buy St. Therese of Lisieux's Story of a Soul and Blessed Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light - The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta.
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