For the first time on the blog, I am officially doing a movie review for Missio Alliance. The Letters, a movie about Mother Teresa’s “dark night of the soul,” is in theaters now.
The Letters was recently released to audiences nation-wide. The movie documents the life, convictions, and inner turmoil of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the woman we have come to know and love as Mother Teresa. Born on August 26, 1910, Gonxha left her home at the age of eighteen to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. In this place, Mother Teresa grew in her faith, taught young girls, and eventually became headmistress.
The movie fast tracks through her life with a series of flashbacks referenced during the conversations and considerations for determining whether or not she would be considered a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church after her death in September 1997. The narrator and researcher is quite clear about what he wants the viewers to know and understand about Mother Theresa. Of key importance was the first miracle attributed to her. In 1998, an Indian woman, Monica Besta, wearing a locket with an image of Mother Teresa prayed and was cured of a tumor. This was one of two miracles required to affirm sainthood.
This miracle occurred many years after Mother Teresa “saw the light,” a vision of Christ so to speak, urging her to leave the comfort and security of her convent, and go serve the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta, India. Having been firm in her conviction that this life and ministry change was “the Lord’s will, not mine,” she asked for and received permission from Pope Pius XII to pursue her ministry to the poor.
Continue reading at Natasha’s Missio Alliance writing page.
A SISTA'S JOURNEY 