by Tang Huyen

"The idea common to Eckhart and Fénelon is that what blocks God from coming is oneself, one's self. One should vacate oneself to leave space for God to come, and God will come."

Mother Teresa is an interesting case. The Catholic Church's handling
of her is also very interesting. Right off, the issue is, can they be
judged by norms and standards that are not theirs? If so, then they
(she and the Catholic Church) represent a stunning failure of finding
some method that works, some method that works in this life. The
following is an essay in comparative salvation.

She had some experience of Christ talking with her, and then he never
showed up again. She desperately wanted him back, in vain. She availed
herself of spiritual counsel in her Church, and all of it reinforced her
approach, namely trying harder at a method that didn't work — didn't
bring Christ back, didn't bring her satisfaction. She and the Catholic
Church figuratively banged her head against a brick wall, rigidly
clinging collectively the whole time to a method that didn't work.

A different method was well-known to the Catholic Church, however it
was condemned by it, namely the mystical approaches of Eckhart and
Fénelon. Both were condemned by the Catholic Church. Both said that
to open oneself up and to empty oneself out would be the best way to
get God to come. Eckhart went further and said that if one empties
oneself out, God must come in that emptiness. Fénelon said that one
should annihilate oneself and love God for the sake of God (and not for
the sake of oneself), and God would come. All self-interest has to be
forsaken, and only the love for God should take up one's thought. The
idea common to Eckhart and Fénelon is that what blocks God from
coming is oneself, one's self. One should vacate oneself to leave space
for God to come, and God will come.

On the side of Eastern Orthodoxy, Neoplatonic negative theology goes
very much in the same direction, in that one calms oneself, pacifies
oneself, and such peace obligates God to come.

The Catholic Church rejects such ideas and takes God to be active and
not amenable to being forced to come by what we do (or don't do).

I see no reference to such theological difference in the little that I
read about Mother Teresa, but it is instantly obvious that she followed
the teaching of the Catholic Church. She kept praying for Christ to
come, pined away at it relentlessly, and the Catholic Church advised
her to continue to do so, even in the face of failure (he didn't come).

From where I sit, I infer that she was full of herself, full of her
desire for Christ to come, and to me, going by the above teachings of
Eckhart, Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy, she was the cause for God
not coming to her, and the Catholic Church leaned on her to perpetuate
the same exercise in futility. She didn't relax and empty herself to
give God a chance to come. She kept piling on Christ to come, packing
herself solid with her yearning for him to come, but, going by Eckhart,
Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy, she left no free space for him to come.
Her spiritual advisers in the Catholic Church apparently didn't advise
her to ease up, relax and let God do his work, but kept pushing her to
repeat the same routine. From all sides, she was locked up solid.

The whole outlook of her and her Catholic Church emphasises content —
the content of experiences, here Christ talking to her. Eckhart, Fénelon
and Eastern Orthodoxy rise above content to protocol, and see that the
way to get God to come (but the Catholic Church rejects such an activist
view) is to empty oneself out so that there is free space for God to
come. Instead of praying to God to get him to come, she should have
merely abstained from herself, and her emptiness would be filled by
God (but the Catholic Church rejects such an activist view). Ironically
her praying to Christ was vastly more activist than the self-effacement
taught by Eckhart, Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy. To all appearance
she was never exposed to such (heretical) teaching.

I said above that she was full of herself, full of her desire for Christ to
come, that she kept piling on Christ to come, packing herself solid with
her yearning for him to come (such activities would be self-interests to
Fénelon). It can be objected that her altruistic work would negate such
an allegation. However her altruistic work also went in the direction of
doing something. Eckhart, Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy rather go in
the opposite direction, namely of merely emptying oneself and opening
oneself up to God, and leaving the rest up to God.

Actually, whether God comes or not doesn't matter, but what matters is
such an attitude, namely of merely emptying oneself and opening oneself
up, and what one opens oneself up to is fungible, a mere place-holder.
One empties oneself and opens oneself up, that's all, and the rest should
take care of itself. Contrariwise if one still bothered about what happens
after that, one would not have succeeded at merely emptying oneself and
opening oneself up, sans plus. One would still be occupied with
self-interests, to Fénelon. Such self-interests would leave no free space
for God to come, would block God from coming.

Now, let us ignore teachings that she and the Catholic Church take to be
heretical. Let us read the Book. It says in there: "Vanity of vanities, all
is but vanity." Of course she and the Catholic Church would never take
such teaching to apply to God or Christ, the realest of the real, the
bulwark of reality. What transpires is that she and the Catholic Church
take to "hanging on" and not to "letting go." Some experiences happened
and she and the Catholic Church took them for real, hanged on to them
and would not let go of them — would not apply the "vanity" teaching to
them and to the person who apparently came in them, Christ.

She could have applied the "vanity" teaching to her spiritual experiences
(but let us remember that this is a counter-factual hypothesis, and for
her to do so would have been heretical to the Catholic Church), let go of
them, and merely prayed, without any expectation, say, of Christ coming
to her. She could have simply prayed (and stopped there and left the rest
up to God), and could have considered the expectation of Christ coming
in response to her praying as hubris — exactly the way the Catholic
Church considers that Eckhart, Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy are
hubristic in expecting God to come by merely emptying oneself out,
pacifying oneself and expecting God to come to fill such emptiness and
peace. For her to pray to Christ and expect him to come would be to
impose herself on him — hubris par excellence.

Traditional mysticism in Christianity, including the Catholic Church,
teaches to make oneself small in front of God. Basically Eckhart,
Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy take this teaching and amplify it all the
way. To all appearance she didn't put it into practice, and the Catholic
Church didn't advise her to, either. She and it just wanted to apply force,
brute force, to forcing Christ to come by praying, like between equals,
which is exactly the way the Catholic Church considers that Eckhart,
Fénelon and Eastern Orthodoxy are hubristic in expecting God to come
by merely emptying oneself out, pacifying oneself and expecting God to
come to fill such emptiness and peace. But Eckhart, Fénelon and Eastern
Orthodoxy simply take the teaching that one should make oneself small
in front of God and magnify it all the way. The smaller one makes
oneself, the more one makes way for God to come. Whether God actually
comes or not matters little, given the greater scheme of things, which
says that making oneself small is in itself salvific.

In making oneself small, one doesn't put up expectations, especially about
making God come. One simply makes oneself small. In praying, one simply
prays. The rest, one leaves up to God. Such ideas apparently didn't show
up anywhere near Mother Teresa. All happened as if she had taken herself
to be in command, and she had commanded Christ to come by her praying.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 21 October 2007, in the thread "Blocking God by hubris (was Re: Has the flood ended?)," in reply to pseudomodo adding Mother Teresa to a list of the self-loathing. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

An essay in comparative salvation using Mother Teresa's published spiritual diaries as a case study. The argument turns on a doctrinal split within Christianity itself: the Catholic mainstream (petition, importunity, doing) vs. the condemned mystics (emptying, opening, non-doing). TH reads Teresa's dark night not as a sign of exceptional holiness but as the predictable result of a method that blocks what it is trying to attract. The twist is that TH's conclusion — one simply empties and opens, and what one opens to is fungible, a place-holder — collapses the distinction between Christian mysticism and Buddhist non-attachment. Eckhart's "God must come" and the Buddhist "drop everything and walk free" are, in this reading, the same teaching in different dress. The post belongs alongside "Opening versus Blocking," "Blocking versus Flowing," and the "Nothing Is Salvation" post for the full arc of TH's teaching on self-vacancy as liberation.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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