St. Teresa on Prayer and Mental Distress

As I wrote yesterday, I've been reading St. Teresa's Way of Perfection. There are so many wonderful little passages. I share this one which I think could be a comfort and encouragement to anyone trying to pray through emotional distress, upset, anxiety, depression, etc.:

There are occasions when one cannot help doing this [i.e. suffer distraction]: times of ill-health (especially in persons who suffer from melancholia); or times when our heads are tired, and, however hard we try, we cannot concentrate; or times when, for their own good, God allows His servants for days on end to go through great storms. And, although they are distressed and strive to calm themselves, they are unable to do so and incapable of attending to what they are saying, however hard they try, nor can they fix their understanding on anything: they seem to be in a frenzy, so distraught are they. 

The very suffering of anyone in this state will show her that she is not to blame, and she must not worry, for that only makes matters worse, nor must she weary herself by trying to put sense into something—namely, her mind—which for the moment is without any. She should pray as best she can: indeed, she need not pray at all, but may try to rest her spirit as though she were ill and busy herself with some other virtuous action. These directions are meant for persons who keep careful guard over themselves and know that they must not speak to God and to the world at the same time. What we can do ourselves is to try to be alone—and God grant that this may suffice, as I say, to make us realize in Whose presence we are and how the Lord answers our petitions. Do you suppose that, because we cannot hear Him, He is silent? 

(from chapter 24. Text from Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Praecinge me, Domine

When I took the psychological tests as part of my application to the Capuchin Franciscan Order, the doctor, a religious himself, told me that I had a "feature" of obsessive compulsive disorder.

"What's a 'feature'?," I asked.

"It's the lowest level of diagnosable pathology," he responded. "Don't worry; it's actually an asset in religious life."

Later today I am to offer Mass for a high school student retreat. Have alb, cincture, stole, and chasuble, will travel:

UPDATE: Happy now, CUA?

St. Blase

Of course yesterday was not the feast of St. Blase, because it was Sunday. But we offered the traditional blessing of throats anyway. I must have uttered these words a few hundred times yesterday:

Through the intercession of St. Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat, and from every other illness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

This is a really popular thing; people were even coming at the end of Mass on purpose to get it. On the one hand, it seems strange; why should a little blessing on the throat (along with the arcana of the crossed candles) be such a big deal in comparison with, say, the communion with the inner life of Trinity we are offered in the Eucharist? I think that's why things like this annoy some clergy. On the other hand, somehow it really speaks to people.

Maybe we don't preach and teach enough on the mystery of illness in the Christian life. God knows that there are enough physically and mentally ill people out there to hear it. Perhaps it's because we are uncomfortable with the assertion that illness has something to do with the fallen state of the world. And that's a hard thing to manage pastorally; it's not that I'm sick right now because of my sins in particular, but it's because of the mystery of sin in the world that we suffer in our sickness. To someone (or ourselves!) who is already sick, not at their best, and perhaps worried about how they stand before the Lord, that can be a hard distinction to notice and embrace.

Certainly in a society that seems to be so manically bent on denying death and aging, we might do well to preach more on the mystery of illness.