Mother Teresa & Me: Walking the path of doubt and holiness with a saint

Mother Teresa & Me, slated for a one-day-stand in some 800 theaters across the United States on October 5, is aptly described as “a film about love and compassion inspired by the life of Mother Teresa.” The beloved saint of recent memory, who for decades served the poor and dying in the slums of Kolkata, India, comes to life in a new way in this touching new release.

Mother Teresa’s story — from the call to her “vocation within a vocation” to the building of her religious community to her lingering doubts even of God’s existence — is told in flashback mode as a young British woman of Indian birth learns of the nun’s “dark night of the soul” period through reading her published letters. The woman, Kavita, is in a difficult situation: she is unhappy with her relationship, her parents want to secure a husband for her in traditional Indian fashion, she is pregnant, and she is considering abortion. 

Kavita can’t bring herself to go through with that extreme “solution,” so she travels to her India birthplace to reunite with Deepali, her childhood nanny. Deepali herself was taken in by Mother Teresa as a child and later worked with the Missionaries of Charity in the Kolkata slums. Her reminiscences of the saint and her coaxing of Kavita to volunteer in the order’s Nrmal Hriday (“Home of the Pure Heart,” a hospice for the dying poor) begin to inspire Kavita with clarity amid her own doubts and troubles in the present day.

Teresa’s interior struggles were not widely known before her death in 1997: they came to light only after her heartfelt letters to her confessors were made public years later. While the letters surprised many believers, they also highlight a very human side to the nun, revealing a struggle of faith not often seen in hagiographical accounts of saints. Awareness that even saints sometimes wrestled with doubts of faith and melancholy can provide strength and inspiration for overcoming one’s own life struggles.