Saints, Depression, Assumptions, and Me

I did a Google search for [patron saint depression] the other day, and got this gem:

“How did the Saints deal with depression?”
[redacted]
[August 2023] “There is no evidence they had depression, they lived in faith, that Everything is controlled by God, and they accepted God’s Will in all …”

Not long before, someone in an online conversation had said ‘I’m dealing with depression, and need help’.

Along with potentially-helpful responses, someone chastised the supplicant. Seems that good Christians trust God and never experience such things as depression.

That gave me this week’s topic.

• Dealing With Depression — and Suicide
  • Depression, Faith, and Making Decisions
• Assorted Saints
  • Teresa of Ávila: Mystic and Troublemaker
  • Becoming a Saint
  • Cultural Legacies and a Disclaimer
  • João Duarte Cidade, AKA Saint John of God
  • Saint Benedict Joseph Labre
• Poverty, Terminal Illness, and Ham Sandwiches
• Doing My Daily Prayers
• Dark Night of the Soul
  • “…The Moment Passed….”

---

Dealing With Depression — and Suicide

I’d done the Google search because I’d been asked to pray for someone who’s dealing with depression, and for someone else who’s suicidal.

About that: suicide is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. Nobody should. But giving up on someone who’s done it isn’t an option, not if I’m going to act as if what I believe matters. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2280-2283)

“We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”
(Catechism, 2283)

The reason suicide is a bad idea is, basically, that my life is precious. So is yours, and everyone’s: even when it doesn’t feel like it is. I’ll get back to that, very briefly, after listing a few resources. Starting with a phone number — 988 — and a web page.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
“…988 Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the United States….”

Not everyone lives in the United States. And as important as crisis hotlines are: there’s more to life than crisis hotlines. With that in mind, here are a few resources:

• Get help & support for suicide
  Help Center, Google Search Help
• Suicide Prevention
  (If you or someone you know is in crisis/What is suicide?/What are the warning signs of suicide?/What are the risk factors for suicide?/…)
  Mental Health Information, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health
• USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
  • Killing the Pain, Not the Patient: Palliative Care vs. Assisted Suicide
  • Novena for Mental Health (These are prayers: no offense, and no pressure)
    • Day 8 — Suicide Awareness
  • “Youth Suicidal Behavior“, Daniel Brown, M.A., Art A. Bennett, M.A.; Frank J. Moncher, Ph.D.

Depression, Faith, and Making Decisions

Responding to someone’s plea for help with depression with “There is no evidence [that Saints] had depression, they lived in faith….” struck me as being about as helpful as giving a drowning man an anchor.

Maybe the person who wrote that really believes that someone who “has faith” can’t experience depression.

That’s not how it works.

Since I’m a Catholic, I think that believing is possible only through the grace of God, and workings of the Holy Spirit. And that it is something I do, using my intellect and my will: deliberately cooperating with God. (Catechism, 154-155)

There’s more to it. (Catechism 143-165, for starters)

Feelings, emotions, “passions” in Catholic-speak, are very real. And they’re an important part of being human. They connect “the life of the senses and the life of the mind”. (Catechism, 1763-1764)

By themselves, feelings aren’t good or bad. They’re just there. What I decide to do with my feelings: that’s where ethics, choosing between right and wrong, get involved. (Catechism, 1787-1770, 1776-1794, and more)

Whether I call depression a mental health disorder, psychiatric condition, or mood disorder: it’s real, and not the sort of blue mood that a good joke or a glass of lemonade can cure.

It’s also in the list of disorders I deal with, which include:

• ADHD: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, inattentive type
• ASD: Autism spectrum disorder
• Cluster A personality disorder
• GAD: Generalized anxiety disorder
• PDD: Persistent depressive disorder
• PTSD: Post traumatic stress disorder

As I’ve said before, I’m a mess: but I keep trying to work with what I’ve got.

---

Assorted Saints

Some ‘lives of the Saints’ books give the impression that Saints were perfect people whose inhuman cheerfulness was matched only by their sappy soundbites. And who usually died of Victorian Novel Disease.

There really are Saints who fit that pattern, at least to an extent.

Take Dominc Savio, for example.¹

“…In 1857, 15-year-old Dominic contracted tuberculosis and was sent home to recover. He died shortly after his return.

“On his deathbed, Dominic prayed, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony!’ A change came over him and he sat up to say his final words: ‘What beautiful things I see!’…”
(“March 9: Feast Day of St. Dominic Savio“, Clarion Herald, Official Newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (February 15, 2012))

I’m a very sentimental man, very emotional at any rate, and St. Dominic Savio’s last words inspire a homesickness of sorts: for a home I’ve never seen. But stories of the Saints like his aren’t the reason I became a Catholic, and that’s another topic.

Teresa of Ávila: Mystic and Troublemaker

Many Saints aren’t like Dominic Savio.

Teresa of Ávila was, among other things, a Carmelite nun who thought her order had gotten entirely too easy-going.

I think she was right, but quite a few of her fellow-nuns didn’t.

They’d gone through proper channels, getting official approval, when they eased up on the rules. Pope Eugene IV, for example, okayed rule changes about eating meat and being silent.

By Teresa’s time, about a century later, ‘observance lite’ wasn’t doing much to protect and strengthen the spirit and practice of prayer. That was Teresa’s view, anyway.²

The point I’m groping for is that Saints, even Saints who are famous mystics, don’t necessarily fit the ‘plaster statue’ stereotype.

Becoming a Saint

I’ll grant that Saints aren’t “normal”.

If they were, then they wouldn’t be Saints: or, rather, we’d all be Saints. Which would be nice, but isn’t going to happen, barring miracles; not just now, and I’m wandering off-topic.

This is as good a place as any for a (very) quick look at what makes someone a Saint.

“CANONIZATION: The solemn declaration by the Pope that a deceased member of the faithful may be proposed as a model and intercessor to the Christian faithful and venerated as a saint on the basis of the fact that the person lived a life of heroic virtue or remained faithful to God through martyrdom (828; cf. 957).

“SAINT: The ‘holy one’ who leads a life in union with God through the grace of Christ and receives the reward of eternal life. The Church is called the communion of saints, of the holy ones (823, 946; cf. 828). See Canonization.”
(Glossary, Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Living “a life of heroic virtue” would be possible for someone who works up a sweat while turning a book’s pages.

But frailty isn’t required. Saint Peter was a fisherman before Jesus recruited him, and Pope Saint John Paul II enjoyed both skiing and kayaking.

As a Christian, my goal is — should be — becoming a Saint. Which doesn’t mean I should have a death wish, although Saints are, by definition, dead and in Heaven.

That reminds me: folks the Church recognizes as Saints are the officially canonized ones. After two millennia, it’s an extensive roster: but not a complete one.³ I’m about as sure as I can be about anything that there are a very great many unlisted Saints.

Cultural Legacies and a Disclaimer

Again, Saints aren’t your average Catholics. If they were, we’d be living in a very different world.

Some, like Hildegard of Bingen, weren’t exactly “average” in the sense of having nothing but living as if God matters to make them stand out. She was an administrator, author, composer, and scientist before “science” was a thing.

Others — well, living on a pillar where folks can watch them not eat will get attention, no matter what’s motivating the behavior.

I haven’t forgotten about Saints, depression, and making sense; but first I’ll take a quick look at Saints who chose unconventional career paths.

A very quick look, since I don’t feel up to sorting through my available resources.

Between a previous century’s taste for schmaltzy ‘lives of the Saints’, and living in a culture that’s been occasionally dominated by folks who think Henry VIII’s personal church is entirely too Popish⁴ — finding the Saint under the schmaltz and screed is a challenge.

So, with the disclaimer that these are sketchy descriptions, here goes:

João Duarte Cidade, AKA Saint John of God

St. John of God started life as João Duarte Cidade. He was kidnapped, seduced, or became the student of a priest — take your pick. Then he was a homeless orphan or apprenticed to a shepherd or maybe a farmer — again, take your pick.

The farmer wanted João to marry his daughter, but João signed up with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s army, under the Count of Oropesa.

After not being executed for alleged collusion in theft, he went back to the farm. Four years later, he re-joined the Count of Oropesa. A few stops after that, he was in Africa, herding sheep. Which gave him time to think.

Long story short, João renamed himself John of God, peddled books in Granada, where he listened to John of Ávila. Then — by standards of his day — he snapped.

The year was 1537.

Acting like a lunatic — publicly beating himself, begging for mercy, repenting his sins — got him dropped into a local loony bin. There he was chained, flogged, and starved: which was standard therapy at the time.

In my youth, he might have been lobotomized. Times change, and we learn: slowly, but we do learn.

John of Ávila had his own problems. He’d said that wealth doesn’t buy tickets to Heaven.

That offended the usual suspects, and got John of Ávila turned over to the Spanish Inquisition: but since the charges were bogus, that ended with his being cleared and released. The Spanish Inquisition — is yet another topic.

Long story short, João Duarte Cidade became a health care worker of sorts: suspected by decent folks, due to his mental health issues; supported by priests who realized that he was helping folks who needed help.

These days we know him as Saint John of God.⁵

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre

‘Stories of Seriously Sappy Saints’ don’t top my reading list. But I realize that some really did fit the swooning Saint stereotype.

One of those is Benedict Joseph Labre.

He was the oldest child of a well to do or middle class — like I said before, take your pick — family. As a child, Benedict was studious, and —

“…Even at that tender age he had begun to show a marked predilection for the spirit of mortification, with an aversion for the ordinary childish amusements, and he seems from the very dawning of reason to have had the liveliest horror for even the smallest sin. All this we are told was coexistent with a frank and open demeanor and a fund of cheerfulness which remained unabated to the end of his life….”
(St. Benedict Joseph Labre, Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) via New Advent)

Already you know which way this is going.

Benedict tried to sign up with the Trappists, but didn’t qualify. Among other things, he was too “delicate”.

He didn’t, however, die during an epidemic that killed his uncle. They’d both been working with the sick and dying; so I figure that if nothing else, young Benedict had a robust immune system.

Two other monastic orders turned him down, so Benedict settled on becoming homeless.

‘Foolishness for Christ’ has precedents: like Alexius of Rome and Saint Roch. And we’ve got mendicant religious orders: focusing on working with the poor, relying entirely on handouts and the good will of neighbors.

Eventually, malnutrition and exhaustion caught up with Benedict. He died in April of 1783, after being taken — against his wishes — to a house behind the Santa Maria dei Monti in Rome.

There you have it: the intelligent son of a decent middle-class family turned his back on conventional values and rejected the materialistic mindset.

From some viewpoints, he must have been nuts.

Me? I grew up in the Sixties. I wasn’t, by a wide margin, the craziest of ‘those crazy kids’. But opting out of the rat race?⁶ It’s a decision I could and can understand.

Buying stuff I don’t need, with money I don’t have, to impress people I don’t like — never made sense to me.

---

Poverty, Terminal Illness, and Ham Sandwiches

Given my native culture’s assumptions, I’d better re-emphasize that world-class poverty and terminal illness are not what make Saints saintly.

It’s ‘living a life of heroic virtue or remaining faithful to God through martyrdom’.

Malnutrition can be a by-product of extreme focus on something other than keeping body and soul connected. But I’m not at all convinced that self-starvation is a good idea. Researching that would involve more time and energy that I have this week.

Maybe it’s not obvious, but I think Saints are genuinely holy folks. And I think visions really happen.

I also think that swoons are real, that they’re not necessarily visions, and that eating a ham sandwich or two can be a really good idea.

“…These swoons should be eliminated as much as possible; they should be resisted and the organism strengthened by more substantial food….”
(“The Three Ages of the Interior Life: Prelude of Eternal Life,” Part 4, Ch. 51; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1938-1939) via christianperfection.info)

Finally, about Saints and making sense —

Were John of God and Benedict Joseph Labre loonies? Maybe.

Are they Saints? Definitely.

Does than mean (all) Saints are crazy? Hardly.

---

Doing My Daily Prayers

Oh, boy. Knew I’d forgotten something.

An explanation for that prayer request I got.

One of the few things I can do for my neighbors is pray. That’s why I signed up for my parish’s intercessory prayer chain.

“Intercessory prayer” is a fancy name for praying on another person’s behalf. I think it makes sense: but I’ll grant that it assumes God, my neighbors, and me exist — that we’re all people — and that’s a whole mess of topics for another time.

The point is that I’ve got a pile of Post-it^® notes in a file folder. Each has at least one prayer request on it. The pile is about halfway through my ‘daily prayers’ sheets. When a new request comes in, I put it on top of the pile, removing the oldest request.

I won’t claim that this is the best way to handle such things. But for me, it’s how I make sure I actually do my prayers each day.

It’s Friday afternoon as I’m writing this, so you’re in luck: there’s no time for a long look at prayer, prayers, praying, and all.

The short version is that prayer is important. It’s always possible. But it’s not always easy. (Catechism, 2697-2865)

There’s more about intercessory prayer, the Saints, and being part of a (huge) family of faith. (Catechism, 954-959)

But if I talk about that, there’ll be no time for the dark night of the soul.

---

Dark Night of the Soul

Saint John of the Cross — he’s one of 39 Doctors of the Church — they’re folks who’ve been recognized as significantly adding to what we know about what we believe — and if I go down that rabbit hole, I’ll still be writing this next week.

St. John of the Cross was in prison during the late 1570s. He was, from one viewpoint, conspiring with Teresa of Ávila: and that’s yet again another topic.

Or maybe not so much. A pattern I’ve noticed with Saints is that they often get in trouble with the powers that be. Then again, some of them were the powers that be.

The point is that time in prison gave St. John of the Cross time to think. Odds are very good that he sketched out his poem, “La noche oscura del alma”, then. In my language it’s called “Dark Night of the Soul”

A few years later, in 1584 and 1585, he explained the poem, one stanza at a time. It’s his “Declaración” treatise.⁷

I gather that one of the points in “Dark Night of the Soul” is that dry patches happen.

That knowledge is comforting.

Sometimes, — make that quite often — I don’t feel much like praying. Apparently it’s not just me. (Catechism, 2728, 2731)

I’m no Saint — that’s a goal and emphatically a work in progress — but “dark night of the soul” strikes a chord.

Doing what is needed at the moment, even though all the light and color has drained out of my world, has often been just the way things were. It’s been like that since my 12th year.

Happily, faith is a matter of the will and reason, not how I’m feeling at the moment.

“…The Moment Passed….”

Not everyone — and not all Saints — experience spiritual dryness, a stretch of life that’s singularly devoid of the emotional perks folks associate with ‘being spiritual’.

But some have.

And Mother Teresa of Calcutta may hold the world record for experiencing a spiritual ‘dry patch’.

It’s been a while since I’ve read expressions of shock and horror over a Saint not conforming to my culture’s notion of ‘being a Saint’. Can’t say that I miss them.

I was going to talk about Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity,⁸ but it’s late: and I still have today’s prayers looming.

So here’s something Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote:

“…Often I wonder what does really God get from me in this state — no faith, no love — not even in feelings. The other day I can’t tell you how bad I felt. — There was a moment when I nearly refused to accept. — Deliberately I took the Rosary and very slowly and without even meditating or thinking — I said it slowly and calmly. The moment passed — but the darkness is so dark, and the pain is so painful. — But I accept whatever He gives and I give whatever He takes. People say they are drawn closer to God — seeing my strong faith. — is this not deceiving people? Every time I have wanted to tell the truth — ‘that I have no faith’ — the words just do not come — my mouth remains closed. — And yet I still keep on smiling at God and all….”
(Letter to Bishop Lawrence Trevor Picachy (September 1962), as quoted in “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light” (2009) by Brian Kolodiejchuk, 2009, p. 238; via Wikiquote)

That’s the sort of faith I can take seriously: something that still works, even when emotions are pulling the other way, and starting prayers is an act of cold determination.

I’ve talked about that, and vaguely-related stuff, before:

• “Prescription Quest: Another Month’s Epic Saga“
  (September 9, 2023)
• “Euthanasia for the Mentally Ill: Not a Good Idea?“
  (January 18, 2023)
• “St. Jude, Judas Thaddaeus: Patron Saint of Desperate Cases“
  (August 13, 2022)
• “Still Rejoicing“
  (July 2, 2017)
• “Mother Teresa: ‘The Moment Passed’“
  (September 4, 2016)

---

¹ A young Saint:

• Wikipedia
  • Dominic Savio (Domenico Savio)
• Saint Dominic Savio
  (“So Young and Already So Holy”), Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood
• Saint Dominic Savio
  Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media (March 10)

² Saints and a stereotype:

• Wikipedia
  • Carmelites
  • Pope Eugene IV
  • Teresa of Ávila
• “The Carmelites,”
  Resource for a workshop held at Saint Andrew’s Abbey, Valyermo, California; St. John’s Seminary (1990)
• Victorian Novel Disease
  TV Tropes
• My take on two troublesome Teresas and Juan
  • “Mother Teresa: ‘The Moment Passed’” (September 4, 2016)
    • Teresa: a Troublemaker
    • Juan: Hardcore Faith

³ Saints, a little background:

• Wikipedia
  • Canonization
  • Pope John Paul II
  • Saint Peter
• Pre-apostle jobs of Peter and his brother Andrew; James and John, sons of Zebedee
  • Matthew 4: 18–22
  • Mark 1:16–20
  • Luke 5:1–11
• Saints
  Public Affairs, USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)

⁴ Attitudes, assumptions, a little history, and a Saint:

• Wikipedia
  • Anti-Catholicism
  • Anti-Catholicism in literature and media
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United States
  • Anti-Catholicism
  • Church of England
  • Desert Fathers
  • Henry VIII
  • Hildegard of Bingen
  • Maria Monk (author of the perennial best-seller “Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed” (1836))
  • Popery (Popish Papism: the offense of being insufficiently anti-Catholic)
  • Popish Plot
  • Stylite

⁵ Two Saints, and psychosurgery:

• Wikipedia
  • John of Ávila
  • John of God
  • Lobotomy
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) via New Advent
  • Bl. [now Saint] John of Avila
  • St. John of God

⁶ More Saints, and something I opted out of:

• Wikipedia
  • Alexius of Rome
  • Benedict Joseph Labre
  • Foolishness for Christ
  • La Trappe Abbey (home of the Trappists)
  • Mendicant orders
  • Rat race
  • Saint Roch
  • Santa Maria ai Monti (AKA Santa Maria dei Monti, Madonna dei Monti)
  • Trappists (Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Latin: Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae, formerly known as the Order of Reformed Cistercians of Our Lady of La Trappe)
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) via New Advent
  • St. Alexius
  • St. Benedict Joseph Labre
  • St. Roch

⁷ Saints and faith:

• Wikipedia
  • Dark Night of the Soul
  • Doctor of the Church
  • John of the Cross
  • Leopold III, Margrave of Austria (former Margrave of Austria, Saint)
  • Saint Thorlak (Thorlak Thorhallsson, former Bishop of Skálholt, patron saint of Iceland)
  • William of Gellone (former Duke of Toulouse, Saint)
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) via New Advent
  • Mystical Theology
  • St. John of the Cross

⁸ A 20th century Saint:

• Wikipedia
  • Kalighat Home for the Dying
  • Missionaries of Charity
  • Mother Teresa
• “Missionaries of Charity face delayed approval of foreign funding“
  Linda Bordoni, Vatican News (December 28, 2021)
• “The Light Amid the Darkness“
  Understanding the Heroic Faith and Love of Mother Teresa In View of Her Dark Night of the Soul, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, Missionaries of Charity; Columbia Magazine; Knights of Columbus (June 30, 2010)