Faith Matters: Teresa's humanity was saintly

No one is more deserving of the title. That's why so many people called her the "saint of the gutters."

Still, I was sort of hoping the Roman Catholic Church would wait a hundred years or so before canonizing Teresa of Calcutta.

Saints seem so removed from the real world. They become objects of devotion rather than subjects for emulation. They seem to have superhuman qualities.

Mother Teresa was perhaps the most human being of our time or any time. So human, in fact, she sometimes felt abandoned by God.

"I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing," Mother Teresa wrote many years ago, according to The Associated Press.

"I am told God lives in me -- and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul," she wrote.

That doesn't sound like a saint. That sounds like a regular person who is suffering.

Mother Teresa's painful personal writings were revealed only recently, in research for her candidacy for sainthood. The Associated Press called her personal suffering "an astonishing secret."

It shouldn't astonish or discourage us that Mother Teresa suffered. On the contrary, it should encourage and enlighten us.

Mother Teresa didn't merely suffer. She suffered with others. She was the epitome of Christian compassion.

Compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum. It means "to suffer with."

"(Compassion) is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position," Douglas Morrison, Donald McNeill and Henri Nouwen wrote in the book "Compassion."

"On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there."

Mother Teresa built a home in the Calcutta slums, one of the most insufferable places on earth. Her suffering was obedient, intentional, instructive, and saintly.

"The saints do not teach us how to avoid suffering; they teach us how to suffer," Robert Ellsberg wrote in his new book, "The Saints' Guide to Happiness."

How and why.

"Suffering is meant to purify, to sanctify, to make us more Christ-like," Mother Teresa wrote.

Sainthood requires proof of at least two miracles attributed to the candidate. The Vatican already has recognized one. A young Indian woman claimed that her large stomach tumor vanished after she prayed to Mother Teresa.

One more miracle and Teresa of Calcutta is a saint.

"Her life of loving service to the poor has inspired many to follow the same path," members of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order she founded, said in a statement after Mother Teresa's beatification.

"Her witness and message are cherished by those of every religion as a sign that 'God still loves the world today.' "

How's that for a miracle?

Memphis columnist David Waters may be reached by e-mail at waters@commercialappeal.com or by mail at The Commercial Appeal, P.O. Box 334, Memphis, TN 38101.