Homily for 4/5 February 2012
Recently, the country was shocked when Gary Speed, a handsome man with a successful career in sports and a beautiful family, took his own life. It reminded us that depression can strike anybody.
Job speaking in our first reading today is seriously depressed. He can see no point in anything. No meaning. No purpose. What to do?
He cannot sleep. At night he restlessly longs for day to arrive, but then during the day he is longing for the night. It is a bleak, joyless time.
Depression is like this. The sufferer from depression thinks the cloud will never lift, and is tempted to despair.
But Job clung to his faith, clung to it grimly at times. He asks God why, what has he done to deserve this and why does God tolerate a world in which the wicked flourish and the poor are left destitute and suffering. This honest, direct way that Job speaks to God is real prayer.
There will be times in our lives when we go through a patch like this. It is normal. Particularly if things are going wrong in our lives. Times of bereavement. Losing a job. Someone we love has walked out on us.
Or just helplessness at what to do in a very difficult situation.
When depression sets in, most of us put our heads down and go forward even though we may not feel like it. We make ourselves do the things that must be done, see the people we know it is right and good for us to see, and not give in. We know we could not be anything other than depressed given what is happening. The fact that it makes sense helps us to cope.
But Clinical depression is something different. It is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.
Individuals with clinical depression are unable to function as they used to.
Often they have lost interest in activities that were once enjoyable to them, and feel sad and hopeless for extended periods of time. Clinical depression is not the same as feeling sad or depressed for a few days and then feeling better. It can drag on. It can affect your body, mood, thoughts, and behavior.
It can change your eating habits, how you feel and think, your ability to work and study, and how you interact with people.
With the right treatment, most people who seek help get better within several months. Many people begin to feel better in just a few weeks. Research

suggests that clinical depression may be linked to changes in the functioning of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. The usefulness of antidepressant medications suggests that brain chemistry is involved in depression.
Whatever the reason, when we are depressed though, we need to be able to turn to someone. Yes, to have family, good friends there for us. But we need more.
Jesus is today presented in the Gospels to us as Lord over Life and Death,
Health and Well-Being. He heals the sick
He invites us to come to Him. To lay our burdens at his feet. To tell him our troubles and our woes. What is the alternative? The only alternative is to try and cope alone. And we cannot do that. We were never meant to.
Sadly one of the things depressed people do is to shut others out, including
God. It is a perverse and self-destructive act. Like being in a house that is on fire and locking out the very fire men who are trying to get in to rescue them.
We are relational beings. We are made for relationship with God and others.
When we cease to do so, we are sick.
Sometimes the human doctor alone cannot do it for us. We need the Divine
Physician because our sickness goes deeper than the mind and the Body. It is a sickness of the soul. Then we need to turn to the Healer of our Souls.
Before Communion I will say
….but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. My soul - that deepest part of my being.
After Communion today, when you get back to your seat, close your eyes.
The same Jesus who raised Peter’s Mother-in-law from her sick bed is with you. Tell him where you are hurting. Feel his loving arms embrace you and his healing hands touch that place in you. This same Jesus who raised her from her sickbed wishes to raise you also from weighs heaviest upon you.
May his love and power restore you.
773 words Holy Apostles 4/5 Feb 2012 5B