[Pearls Ep 162: Answering atheism Tuesday.]
As we finish looking at Sunday’s Gospel message of Living Water, let’s turn to a practical example.
The scourge of depression.
We’re particularly thinking of non-clinical depression. Fulton Sheen regularly distinguished between depression that required legitimate medical intervention of psychiatry (which were relatively few cases) and the flood spiritual disorders that were incorrectly categorized and treated as depression with psychology and psychotherapy.
This type of misdiagnosed depression is readily illustrated if you look up “high functioning depression” or “persistent depressive disorder” or “functional depression.” You’ll find the same five or six standard symptoms (e.g. fatigue, difficulty concentrating, etc), by which almost all of society is depressed.
Why is that when we’re supposedly so evolved, and woke, and sophisticated, that we’re more miserable than ever?
You won’t find an answer to that in the wisdom of the world, other than scapegoats like “orange man bad.”
While the world can’t explain the cause, it offers no shortage of cures.
If you search on that, other than endless recommendations for psychotherapy and pharmacology (thank you, Big Pharma), you’ll find mostly A-list celebs and podcasters spouting out self-help aphorisms:
- Things don’t happen “to you” they happen “for you”
- The ascent is more important than the goal
- Find joy in the doing not the result
- Focus on gratitude
- Help someone
- Believe that tomorrow will be better
- Eliminate who you are not, and you will find who you are
Is there some ray of wisdom buried in those sound bites? Sure. In fact, the underlying truths for each of those can be found in Sacred Scripture.
But none of that worldly, pull-yourself-up-by-your-self-help-bootstraps will stand the test of time. That’s why we have so many depressed people in the world.
The solution isn’t “in us”. And it isn’t in “the universe.” Nor is it in some “data driven” bullet points from randomized, control-group studies.
The solution is a Person and the Living Water that flows from Him.
But the world will have none of that. And that’s why we’re swimming in a sea of “functioning depression.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. You know who wasn’t depressed? Steve’s Aunt Mary. She lived a simple life – serve God, care for the people around you, and do your work well. She had no particular financial or social aspirations beyond her state in life. The same went for Uncle Charles, Aunt Trudy, Grandma Muriel, Aunt Marie, and on and on.
They really didn’t focus much on the world with its pomp and allurements.
They were tapped into the Living Water.
Did they have ups and downs? Sure. Did they suffer tragedy? Yep. Did they have times when they were barely hanging on? Count on it.
But Christ always carried them through that to something brighter.
That is Living Water – always bringing something fresh and new – just like a flowing river.
Whatever we bring to Christ, if we do it with great faith and trust, He will show us something new.
If we think our problem is too big – He will show us how small it is compared to Him.
If we think we can’t take what we’re facing – He’ll show us how strong we are in him.
If we can’t see how there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, He’ll reassure us that He is at work and, if we trust Him, how He will use this to do something remarkable in our life.
Back to our society’s pandemic of depression. It happens to coincide with faith in God at an all-time low, and exorcists noting diabolical activity at an all-time high.
Our depressed society is thirsty for meaning. Thirsty for purpose. Thirsty for relationship.
In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus tells us where to go to get a drink.
Lenten blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Gospel according to John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”—For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.— Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.
“I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him. When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”