We all go through times of melancholy and to deny that there might be medical reasons for those times is to deny reality but there might also be spiritual reasons.
Monsignor Charles Pope, in yesterday's homily for the first week of Advent, gives related insight and advice culled from the Scripture readings for the day:
Isaiah distinguishes five ailments which beset us, and from which we need rescue. We are drifting, demanding, depraved, disaffected, and depressed. But in the end, Isaiah reminds us of our dignity. Let’s look at each in turn.
1. Drifting – The text says, Why [O Lord] do you let us wander from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.
It is a common human tendency to wander or drift. It is a rarer thing for people to reject God all of
a sudden, especially if they were raised with some faith. Rather, what usually happens is that we just drift away, wander off course. It is like the captain or pilot of a boat who stops paying close attention. Soon enough the boat is farther and farther off course. At first things are not noticed, but the cumulative effect is that the boat is now headed in the wrong direction. He did not suddenly turn the helm and shift 180 degrees, he just stopped paying attention and drifted … and then drifted some more.
And so it is with some of us who may wonder how we got so far off course. I talk with many people who have left the Church and so many of them cannot point to an incident or moment when they walked out of Church and said, “I’ll never come back here.” It is usually just that they drifted away, fell away from the practice of the faith. They missed a Sunday here or there and, little by little, missing Mass became the norm. Maybe they moved to a new city and never got around to finding a parish. They just got disconnected and drifted.
The funny thing about drifting is that the farther off course you get, the harder it is to get back. It just seems increasingly monumental to make the changes necessary to get back on track. Thus Isaiah speaks of the heart of a drifter becoming hardened. Our bad habits become “hard” to break, and as God seems more and more distant to us, we lose our holy fear and reverence for Him.
It is interesting how, in taking up our voice, Isaiah, “blames” God for it all. Somehow it is “His fault” for letting us wander, because He let us do it.
It is true that God has made us free and that He is very serious about respecting our freedom. How else could we love God, if we were not free? Compelled love is not love at all.
But what Isaiah is really getting at is that some of us are so far afield, so lost, that only God can find us and save us. And so we must depend on God being like a shepherd who seeks his lost sheep.
Thus, here is the first way that Isaiah sets forth our need for a Savior. And so, in Advent, reflecting this way, the Church cries out, “Come, Emmanuel! Come, Lord Jesus! Seek and find us for many of us are drifting.”
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5. Depressed - The text says, All our good deeds are like polluted rags; we have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
One of the definitions of depression is anger turned inward. And while Isaiah has given voice to our tendency to direct anger and blame at God, here he gives voice to our other tendency: to turn on ourselves.
Thus, our good deeds are described as being like polluted rags. It may be true that they are less than they could be, but calling them polluted rags also expresses our own frustration with our seemingly hopeless situation: our addiction to sin and injustice.
Ultimately, the devil wants us to diminish what little good we can find in ourselves and to lock us into a depressed and angry state. If there is no good in us at all, then why bother?
There is such a thing as unhealthy guilt (cf 2 Cor 7:10-11) and a self-loathing that is not of God, but from the devil, our accuser. It may well be this that Isaiah articulates here. And from such depressed self-loathing (masquerading as piety) we need a savior. Come, Lord Jesus!
a sudden, especially if they were raised with some faith. Rather, what usually happens is that we just drift away, wander off course. It is like the captain or pilot of a boat who stops paying close attention. Soon enough the boat is farther and farther off course. At first things are not noticed, but the cumulative effect is that the boat is now headed in the wrong direction. He did not suddenly turn the helm and shift 180 degrees, he just stopped paying attention and drifted … and then drifted some more.The Monsignor has more and it's all good stuff particularly for those who are unhappy or down in the dumps.
Read it, digest it and be helped. We are all in need of a Savior and especially in need of knowing of that need. You may be suffering in a way that is indicating that need. Seek help.
Seek Him.
Carry on.
