The Priest and the Mentally Sick

Extract

To the eyes of faith all sickness is a trial. God is there offering us a special grace of purification and of sharing in his redeeming death, but a grace hidden and hard to discern and live. Yet the trial is still more formidable for the man whose sickness is mental, especially when, as is the case with neuroses, the sickness only partly destroys liis balance and control. His agony at feeling himself partly ‘alienated', a stranger, that is, to himself, is intense. Something deep inside him is escaping his inner attention and worse still his power. And on top of that those about him most often, even when they are full of good intentions understand nothing at all, heap one ineptitude on another and (when they have not provoked it) aggravate the disease. The sufferer feels himself excruciatingly alone, not understood, essentially helpless. Very often his faith seems to him unsettled, without strength or efficacy; all is clouded over with pain and despair.