Editor’s Note:

I am a bipolar personality.  The condition did not manifest itself in my life until my fifty-seventh year.  It happened like this:  I was approaching my twenty-fifth anniversary of the ordination to Catholic priesthood.  My mother and at least two of my sisters had arrived for the celebration.  Some days prior to the feast I began to escalate without realization of what was going on.  I was acting very strangely.  At one of the Offices which we monks sing each day, I broke down in my song and began to blubber like a baby.  So I was sent off to bed and in the morning the Abbot, my mother and Sister Helen, drove me off to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, where I was sent to the ward for mental patients.  On the way, my Abbot who was also a psychiatrist, said to me, “I don’t understand why you are acting so inappropriately.  Just act normally.”  I said nothing in reply but was thinking to myself, “If I could act appropriately, you wouldn’t be driving me off the hospital.”

I spent about eleven days there having the time of my life.  My escalation was at a peak and I was enjoying every moment of it.  It was like being in heaven!  Ask and you shall receive.  Soft drinks with ice were available at all times.  Hungry?  Go to the fridge and help yourself to anything there, cold cuts, cheese, ice cream, etc.  There were companions, male and female, to play chess or ping pong with.  Play therapy?  We had volleyball.  Little of this did I have in the monastery!

The doctor had me in Haldol which explains much about the joy I was experiencing.  I was finally sent home, I was finally sent back home but was kept on Haldol.  I exercise regularly and one day I went out to run and something was wrong.  I went about thirty yards but could not take another step.  The side effects of Haldol had caught up with me.  Some monastic brothers helped me off to the infirmary.  Shortly after that, depression came upon me like a metal safe falling from the tenth floor.  My Christian faith, hope, and charity disappeared.  It was like falling into a well of deep darkness with no way out, no ladder, no rope lowered from above.  I felt as though I’ve walked past the sign that said, “Abandon hope all you who enter here.”

My doctor put me on an anti-depressant and said, “You won’t believe me, but you will pull out of this.”  He was right on both counts:  I didn’t believe him and I did pull out of it.  My Abbot encouraged me to do the things I had found interesting before.  He sent Brother Joseph to play some chess with me, a game which I have “loved” since high school days.  It didn’t help much, for Brother Joseph knew little more about the game than how to move the pieces.  No competition, hence no interest stirred up.  Reverend Father also suggested that I try reading some novels.  At first it was difficult, but I think it helped.  The cooks gave me meat to eat which we Trappist do not eat as a rule, but I looked at it with disgust, without appetite but I did manage to force myself to eat, realizing that not eating could have some even more unpleasant consequences.

After about three weeks of this, the depression began to lift and I was able to return to my normal life as a monk and priest.  I was put on Lithium as a regular medication.  Since that day I have not experienced another noticeable depression, although about a year later I went off Lithium.  This resulted in a quick plunge into another escalation which, however, was not followed by a depression.

Those are my credentials for speaking to you about depression.  Actually I know very little about it.  My doctor did tell me that it was caused by an imbalance of chemicals.  When I asked him what causes that imbalance, he replied, “We don’t know.”  We discussed whether our psychological attitudes or external events can bring on a depression, or help to keep us from getting one.  It’s the old conundrum of which comes first, the chicken or the egg.  Do we get a depression because of a chemical imbalance or do we cause that chemical imbalance by gloomy thoughts or suffering brought on by external events like losing a job, the death of a beloved child, etc.  He said that two different people could react to these things in opposite ways.  One could ride through them without plunging into a depression, while another who has an imbalance of chemicals becomes by that fact vulnerable, goes into a depression when he or she can’t cope with the difficult experiences whether interior or exterior.

So much for depression.  Now we turn to contemplation.  These are these vis a vis depression.  Here I feel on more solid ground.  Indeed I believe that I have something that will be of great value to you as you try to incorporate your experience of depression into your lives and try to find some meaning in it.

Right here I would like to widen the field of discussion.  Depression, difficult to bear as it is, and even harder to understand, it is just one form of suffering.  Let’s transcend it and consider suffering in general and its role in our lives; this can give us the means to deal with depression and suffering of whatever kind.

From the beginning we need to realize that most of us consider suffering as something to be avoided, or if it hits us, something to get rid of as soon as possible.  We don’t understand it;  it is an enigma.  We feel that it shouldn’t be, doesn’t belong in our lives.  Suffering has been a problem down through the ages.  Just open the Bible and read Psalm 73 and the first pages of the Book of Job.  There you will find people struggling with the problem of suffering and coming up with partial answers.

In the New Testament we find the ultimate insert to the crux of suffering.  I can express it in just two words:  Jesus Christ.  He is God, one God with the Father and Holy Spirit.  The Father sent him into the world with the express purpose of suffering and dying for the redemption of the whole world, of every person from our first parents and to the last child to be born at the end of time.  He who had no sin became sin for our sakes.  He was counted as one smitten, and by his stripes we are healed.  He bore our sins in his own flesh and by his suffering we have been healed.  By the disobedience of one man, Adam, suffering and death came into the world and by the obedience of one man, Jesus, suffering and death have been overcome.  We are meant to be imitators of Christ.  He bore suffering for our sake and we should be willing to bear suffering for the purification of our own sins and the sins of others.  By suffering in union with the sufferings of Christ, our suffering has value for others and helps them to be freed from their sins.  Christ laid down his life for us and we, too, should lay down our lives for others.

Seen in this light, suffering is no longer an enigma but a gift, an opportunity to share in Christ’s saving mission.  As a gift from God, it should be received with gratitude and praise.  Now I wish to conclude these words with some practical advice.

First, we should pray always and not to faint.  Prayer is the great means that we have to obtain from God the grace to accept our sufferings and make them fruitful to others.  When it comes to accepting suffering we should remember the two poles of the spiritual bipolar personality:  1).  I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.  2).  without him I can do nothing.  We cannot accept suffering and bear it fruitfully without the help of Christ but with him we can.  All things are possible for the believer.

A prayer of acceptance and abandonment to divine Providence that I like and use often goes like this:  Oh my Jesus, I am yours and all I have is yours through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Take me and do with me whatever you please, whatever will give you the greatest honor and glory.  Pray that daily; try to understand what it involves and sincerely mean it, and it will transform your life.  It will help you to stop fighting suffering and begin to accept it as a gift or a friend.  The experience of the Saints has that been by accepting suffering they gradually come to find joy in it.  This is not masochism, but the fruit of a growing love for god and union with His will.  I could give you many quotes from the Saints along this line, but I will mention only one.  Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, who said this, “I can no longer suffer, because my very suffering has become my joy.”

My next suggestion is quite simple and very fruitful when practiced consistently over a period of time.  Since most of us shudder at the thought of enduring severe suffering, as for instance the suffering involved in bone cancer, or being hacked to pieces by a madman, we have to go back to scratch and start with little things.  Here’s what you do:  whenever any little thing happens that goes against the grain, like burning your toast, spilling your coffee on the floor, or hitting your thumb with a hammer, immediately, or at least as soon as the initial frustration or anger has passed, turn to God, thank him and praise him for the gift.  Pretty soon such little things will no longer upset you for you will be growing in the acceptance of God’s holy Will.  One of the worst aspects of suffering is the resistence we have to it.  No cross is so heavy as the one we don’t want to bear.  Once we’re willing to bear it, the cross is not so intimidating and if we persevere we come to realize that it’s a treasure and to value every moment of suffering that the Lord allows us to endure.

Perhaps some who read these lines have no faith in God or Christ.  Do not fear.  God loves you all the same and is very interested in your coming to believe in Him so that He can shower His gifts upon you.  I suggest that you practice the above activities the best you can.  Pray hypothetically:  “Oh God, if you exist, I am yours and all I am is yours.”  Etc.  And when accepting some little suffering say, “Oh God, if you exist, I praise and thank you for this little bit of suffering.”  If you do this, realize that you could not have done it without God’s help.  I can guarantee that by persevering in the practice you are on the way to faith in Christ, who is our way, our truth and our life.  No other name is given us under heaven by which we are to be saved for no one comes to the Father except through Christ.

I believe that we will never master our depression until we are willing to bear it again, and again, as often as God chooses to allow it.  Remember these two things: 1).  the sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us, and  2).  all things cooperate unto good for those who love God.

May God bless each and every one of you and fill you with the fire of his love.



Father Earl was born in 1931 in Battle Creek, Michigan.  In 1949 and 1950 he studied Public School Music at Michigan State College, but left in December of 1950 to join the Air Force where he played french horn in the band, and spent about a year in Korea.  During his military service he joined the Catholic Church.  Having been discharged from the Air Force, he entered the Abbey in 1954.  Ordained a priest in 1963 he served as cantor for over twenty years. After five years in Brazil at Novo Mundo monastery serving as cantor he returned to the Genesee.  He has written a novel entitled A Mountain Upside Down, and fourteen.  Click here for a sampling of some of his homilies from the Abbey website.