Depression

Sometimes life feels like a prison sentence.

That is how it is for Job in today’s first reading (John 7:1-4,6-7):

Has not man a hard service upon earth?
And are not his days like the days of a laborer?

Like a slave who longs for the shade,
and like a laborer who looks for his wages,
so I am allotted months of emptiness,
and wearisome nights are apportioned to me.

When I lie down I say, 'When shall I arise?'
But the night is long,
and I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.

My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
and come to an end without hope.

Remember that my life is wind;
my eye will never look upon good again.

(And after this is read at Mass, we are invited to respond, “Thanks be to God.”)

It is no denial of the goodness of creation or of the providence of God when we say that life is not always wonderful.

Indeed, sometimes life is full of pain and dreariness and sometimes the pain and dreariness seem unending.

Some people try to escape into “smiley face” churches “where life is beautiful all the time” and faith is nothing but warm fuzzies and upbeat music.

Get real.

Life is not always like that and our Christian faith is not always like that.

Indeed, at the very center of our Christian faith is the passion and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And then, when we look at the lives of his greatest followers, what do we see? Trouble upon trouble, usually ending in a painful death.

But it is in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ that we have salvation and eternal life.

And so, from the very beginning, the disciples of Christ have rejoiced in their sufferings, because they have found in those sufferings a special bond of unity with Christ and his saving power: a bond that we too can share, by Christ’s grace uniting any suffering we have with his suffering – even when what we suffer is depression.

Of course, we must be prudent stewards of our bodies and health, taking all appropriate measures to maximize our physical and mental fitness, so that we may serve the Lord and his people with our bodies and minds as well as we can.

And we also have the example of today’s Gospel (Mark 1:29-39), where Peter’s mother-in-law lies in a dark bed of pain.

The Lord Jesus comes to her, takes her by the hand, and helps her up. She then goes on to a ministry of service.

So too in our own lives – no matter how dark and painful things may be – the Lord Jesus calls to us.

He calls us to be united with him in his suffering on this earth, so that we may be even more united with him in heaven.

Depressed or not, you and I need to let the Lord Jesus come ever more fully into our lives, take us by the hand, fill us with the power of his comfort, and help us up, so that we may follow his call on this earth to serve and to love.