Jon M. SWEENEY. Teresa of Calcutta: Dark Night, Active Love. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2022. pp. 162. $19.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-6615-9. Reviewed by Jacob H. FRIESENHAHN, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, TX 78207.

Jon M. Sweeney’s short biography of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, more commonly known as Mother Teresa, provides a helpful, nuanced, and readable introduction to his subject. This biography is part of a series called “The People of God.” Sweeney is the author of three different biographies in this series. His biography of Mother Teresa is helpful in that the life of Mother Teresa is retold clearly, briefly, and in historical context. The book includes a chronology of Mother’s life, endnotes, an annotated biography, and an index. The work is nuanced in that, though Sweeney is always reverent toward “Mother,” he is not blind to his subject’s faults. Hagiography is perhaps permitted when one is literally writing about a saint, but Sweeney includes Mother’s rougher edges in his account. The book is readable in that Sweeney never dives too deeply into any one particular aspect of Mother Teresa’s life or work. He keeps the narrative moving and writes in clear prose. The straightforwardness of the book is perhaps both its strength and its weakness. Sweeney does not break new ground. He presents no original research into previously unknown aspects of Mother’s life, nor does he provide any new hermeneutical key for how to best interpret her life. Bringing forward new material or making a new argument is not Sweeney’s aim. His book is an introduction to the life of a great figure.

As someone who followed Mother Teresa in the television, magazine, and newspaper coverage she was given throughout the 80s and 90s, until her death in 1997, and as someone with a longstanding interest in her life, I did not find in Sweeney’s book anything particularly surprising. I did learn more about her youth in Albania and her early years in religious life than I had known previously. The highlights of her public life were already well known to me, though Sweeney does a fine job rehearsing these highlights. The two chapters of the book I looked forward to reading the most were the chapter on Mother Teresa’s critics (chapter eleven) and the chapter on her decades-long dark night of the soul (chapter thirteen). How would Sweeney handle these complex, fascinating topics?

Sweeney gives his readers a clear sense that Mother Teresa – perhaps surprisingly to those who have not studied her life before – had a number of critics. He even discusses Christopher Hitchens by name. Sweeney does not write disrespectfully of Mother’s critics. He implies their arguments ought to be taken seriously. Sweeney gets into some of the messy details. He informs his readers that Hitchens called Mother Teresa “hell’s angel” and dared to publish a polemical book about her entitled The Missionary Position. The Vatican took Hitchens seriously enough to record his testimony as part of the long canonical process by which Mother Teresa eventually became Saint Teresa of Calcutta (2016). Sweeney devotes a full chapter to Mother Teresa’s critics and gently suggests ways in which her critics might be answered. Mother Teresa herself, in Sweeney’s telling, seems more confused by the motivations of her critics than interested in taking on their arguments. A third-party might remark, “How could anyone offer a moral condemnation of Mother Teresa?” A fair question. But for Teresa herself to have this attitude is presumably a different matter. Then again, here I am, a bit of scoundrel on my best day, nitpicking the morality of Mother Teresa, which feels odd indeed.

In 2007, many Catholics and non-Catholics alike were shocked to learn that for many years Mother Teresa, as she privately shared with her priestly confessors and select others, experienced a deep, disturbing sense of the absence of God. How could Mother Teresa, perhaps the greatest saint of the 20th century, have been plagued for decades by feelings of God’s absence or even non-existence? Sweeney skillfully summarizes this topic for his readers. He devotes a whole chapter to Saint Teresa’s “dark night” and even alludes to it in the subtitle of his book. Sweeney does not resort to pat answers. He treats the topic with the spiritual seriousness with which it deserves to be treated. Sweeney probably says as much as could be said on this topic in a small amount of space, but this reader could not help but want more. The landmark book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, first published in 2007, still stuns and is required reading for anyone interested in this topic. Sweeney’s chapter, as good as it is, simply could not do justice to this material. His task, admirably fulfilled, is to introduce readers to the life of a figure about whom they may well want to learn more.