Appearances

Curé d’Ambricourt: “I said to her, ‘Peace be with you,’ and she’d received that peace on her knees. What wonder, that one can give what one doesn’t possess! Oh, miracle of our empty hands!”
—Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest

Mother Teresa suffered a terrible dark night of the soul for over a decade, sharing in the darkness of Christ’s spiritual agony; yet, she possessed the strength and grace to keep serving the poorest of the poor with cheerfulness. Now, some people are trying to impugn her reputation, for they cannot fathom how a person can really give of herself so completely without some ulterior motive. I once picked up a book from a Catholic thrift store about her; it said she was just doing it all for show, affecting piety for the camera.

In the darkest period of my life, when I was overwhelmed by the demands of depressed friends who kept dumping their inner darkness on me day after day, I felt like a faker. People would remark, “You’re always smiling!” or, “You always look so happy!” (In fact, my cheery headshot which you see appended was taken on a particularly bad Friday night, when I was running an event while periodically dashing out to tend to a friend having a nervous breakdown.) Certainly, I did not wish to spread the gloom within me to others, and I clung to my habit, cultivated from childhood, of always looking for the goodness and beauty in everyday life, and the small slivers of light in the deepest darkness.

But this darkness was terrible. Throughout my life, my family had navigated much trouble and distress, with my father’s nasopharyngeal cancer when I was a mere infant; my brother’s near-fatal head injury when I was four; my father’s stroke when I was ten; the hip injury that rendered my maternal grandmother (already suffering Alzheimer’s) bedridden for three arduous years; and my mother’s brain aneurysm in 2011. In all those tempest-tossed times, the vessel of my inner self remained calm, somehow shielded from the agony of it all; I never wept, but was granted a firm trust in God’s providence. The nurse said I should not go into the Intensive Care Unit to see my half-paralyzed father, because I was only a little girl and it might frighten me. But he was my father, and I was determined to see him; I knew everything was in God’s hands, and he would be all right with time.

christ_walking_on_the_waters_julius_sergius_von_kleverHere, though, swamped hourly with the interior struggles and pain of those around me, I lost sight of Christ’s light, and felt completely destroyed, drowning in a boundless sea of despair. I persevered in my studies and tried to lighten the days by playing pranks or composing poetry, but through it all, I felt like I was only acting. I had lost my inner peace, and did not know if I could ever regain it. Nightly, I was plagued by nightmares about those who pestered me in the day. In the end, I lost a fledgling friendship because I could not contain the darkness within me, and spewed it all over my new friend.

Happily, with time and in the company of good friends, I finally broke free of the crippling manacles around my soul in Holy Week this year, and now I feel whole and authentically joyful again.

So, as the saying goes, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle you know nothing about.” And just because you may be going through a dark time and “faking” joy, it doesn’t mean you’re not being genuine. The very struggle to be a light in all-consuming darkness is a sign of our utter dependence on God for the peace the world cannot give. The struggle is a sign of your true desire for the fulfillment that can only be found in Him, the Alpha and the Omega, our Creator and our End.

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa (1952)


Image: Julius Sergius Von Klever, Christ Walking on the Water / PD-US

Jean Elizabeth Seah

Jean Elizabeth Seah

Jean Elizabeth Seah is a Singaporean living in Australia. She has had several adventures with Our Lord and Our Lady, including running away to join a convent after university. The journey is tough and the path ahead is foggy, but she knows that as long as you hold firmly onto Our Lady’s hand, you’ll make it through! She has also written at Aleteia, MercatorNet and The Daily Declaration.

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