Not Perfect, but Just Right

This week in a class on spirituality led by two nuns, the topic was the Dark Night of the Soul. The presenter repeatedly referred to the Dark Night as a transient experience, a season in the Christian’s life. We look beyond the Dark Night to a renewed sense of communion with God.

I asked how Mother Teresa’s decades-long sense of abject separation from God fit with this classic view of the Dark Night as transient.

The nuns stiffened slightly. They argued Teresa’s Dark Night was perhaps not as bad as some have said. They echoed some of the hagiographic writings that have painted Teresa’s abandonment as a divine favor lovingly tailored to counteract the public acclaim she experienced. I did not prolong the argument, but I think they missed the point.

I heard in the nuns' eagerness to “explain away” Teresa’s endless Dark Night a to keep Teresa on her pillar. They need her to be peerless, exemplary, ideal. They worry that if we see Teresa’s Dark Night as a defect or deficiency, we are somehow dishonoring her ministry.

But Teresa did not need to be flawless to be “just right” for God’s assignment. Brennan Manning is another celebrated Catholic who has touched countless people. His well-known alcoholism has not kept God from using him. Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, offered hope, consolation and insight through his writing. His imperfections included bouts of depression and homosexuality. Still, he was apparently “just right” for the mission God gave him.

God did not need Teresa, Brennan or Henri to be perfect. He used them as they were. And God does not need you to be perfect. Good thing! So don’t wait for perfection or denigrate your ministry because you are not yet flawless. Just do your job. And Jesus will employ you, too, as an agent of his Kingdom.