Missions Resources - Bibliography
Come Be My Light
Authors: Mother Teresa, Brian Kolodiejchuk
ISBN: 978-0385520379
Publisher: Doubleday
Number of pages: 416 pages
Type of cover: Hard Cover
Summary: “Inside, it is dark and feeling that I am totally cut off from God.” One would never guess these to be the words of someone like Mother Teresa, when in fact, that is exactly where they are derived.
Come Be My Light: The private writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” is the compilation of Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual advisors by editor and Father Brian Kolodiedjchuk, also the postulator for her canonization. The book itself records how for years, she fought to have the letters destroyed for fear that their publication would draw more attention to herself and less to Him she served.
This kind of humility is apparent in every letter published. As a young girl, Mother Teresa (or Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu) entered the ministry with vows: to never deny Jesus anything and to satiate his thirst with love and souls. Beginning with her writings as an excited teenage missionary to India, and ending with her secret doubts scrawled out to different Catholic Fathers, Come Be My Light follows just how closely she kept her vows, not simply out of duty, but out of a deep love and intense hunger for Christ.
Kolodiedjchuk’s compilation holds Mother Teresa’s simple theology in each piece of wisdom that she herself lived by. This includes “Jesus gave one big grace—to accept everything with one big smile,” as well as her “Gospel on five fingers,” where each finger represented a word: “you did it to Me.” While her passion was infectious, it was not always felt, as the book’s title suggests. The majority of the book holds letters heavy with inner turmoil.
Mother Teresa’s advisor Father Huart described her in her darker times as a beautifully inviting, sun-bathed chalet whose inside was cold and dark. This inside she kept as private as possible, not out of shame, but that others might not be distracted by it. While the emptiness tormented her, she continued to portray on the outside the Person whose absence she felt on the inside.
Contrary to Mother Teresa’s concern for a book like this, Come Be My Light has not led this reader to worship her as a human. Instead, it has inspired a greater awe of the God she worshiped and a greater longing for the beautiful intimacy to which she dedicated herself. Mother Teresa’s writings—even her doubtful ones—shone with the tireless brilliance of a pure and humble love that could only stream directly from Jesus.
The private compilation is not just for Mother Teresa’s fans; it does not simply unveil the darker side of a celebrity. Instead, it shows the worth of a cause like hers, and reveals how such a small woman remains so great.
Father Brian Kolodiedjchuk deals with the compilations in an honorable way, by keeping even the integrity of Mother Teresa’s punctuation, while adding the necessary commentary and background to tie all of the letters together. The editor shows a genuine understanding of his subject and points readers, as Mother Teresa would have wished, in God’s direction. He reveals that the secret of the love that shone from Mother Teresa was her intimate relationship with God.
This is proven in of one of Mother Teresa’s final writings, which took place in the midst of her suffering on her death bed, when she could barely speak or move; on a scrap of paper she wrote the phone number of the Mother House and the words, “I want Jesus.”
by Shannon Whiting
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