The Human Condition

May is mental health awareness month but what actually is mental health? We all have “mental health” & in order to live a well-balanced & integrated life, it’s something we need to prioritize & talk about.

Mental health doesn’t mean the presence or lack there of a mental illness. It simply relates to the everyday, healthy regulation of our thoughts, feelings & behaviors. We are made mind, body & spirit & each three of these components need to be “healthy” in order for us to thrive.

We don’t need a mental diagnosis or severe disorder to start caring about our mental health. But we have to start having conversations about the importance of our mental health to begin encouraging others to take it seriously! We can’t support our physical or spiritual health if we are suppressing or ignoring or mental health.

The main objective in mind when creating this organization 2 years ago was to help people understand that their suffering or the suffering in others, particularly mental suffering, does not disqualify them from holiness. But rather that suffering can be used as vehicle of Grace in the journey towards sainthood if we allow it to, through seeking genuine healing & authentic integration of psychology & our Catholic faith.

I hope that over the past 2 years, The Human Condition has provided some of you that hope & consolation that you are welcome & needed in the Body of Christ. That your story matters. That mental illness does not disqualify you. That you were still made to be a saint.

While starting a non-profit & figuring out what this organization is being called to become by the Holy Spirit, I’m grateful that my own story of suffering has led me here. I am still very much a work in progress & I know that The Human Condition will continue to grow & serve the church in whatever capacity the Lord desires.

Our patrons Saint Oscar Romero & SOG Dorothy Day, pray for us!

He loved His. Own.
He knelt down to the ground to wash the feet of his own. Of his friends. You and me. He has invited us to his table to partake in what he offers only those who accept it- himself.

In all our brokenness & human frailty, Jesus invites us to join him at the table tonight. The apostles weren’t the holiest men in town, they had their own stories & faults & baggage, as do we. Yet the Savior of the World invites them & us to be his friends, to break bread with us, to wash us, and to eventually die for us. We don’t have to earn it, we have to accept it.

If you’ve ever felt unworthy to sit at Jesus’ table, to accept what he willingly offers to you, to believe that you are worth loving to the end, I invite you to read todays Gospel & pray with the scene of the Last Supper. You are worthy of what Jesus has come to do for you, but will you accept it? Will you let him wash your feet? Will you partake in the great meal of his body that he has prepared for you?

It’s the last Friday in Lent before Good Friday & the one piece of advice or suggestion I can offer you is to go to confession. Whether it’s been a couple weeks or a couple years, I urge you to go to the sacrament of reconciliation before Easter Sunday. It is the best thing you can do this Lent & will make for an even more joyful Easter.

I have heard several priests say that a good confession is more powerful than an exorcism. It literally casts out the darkness within our souls when we bring our faults to the light & to the Lord in this sacrament. It’s more fruitful than a good therapy session or vent session with a friend. It is simply not enough to just confess our sins privately to God on our own, as I so often hear people say they do. Jesus has left us with physical sacraments for a reason, let us run to them.

📷

“By her fiat, then, Mary became voluntarily the Mother of the Redeemer. Tradition recognizes that Mary consented to be Mother of the Redeemer in his redemptive role by calling her the New Eve. The first Eve, by consenting to temptation, led the first man to commit the sin which lost original justice for mankind. Mary is the New Eve by her consent to be the Mother of the Redeemer for the sake of the work of redemption. Mary’s association with Jesus in the redemption is therefore not like that of the apostles, but is something still more intimate.”
Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, o.p.

Mary deeply cares about our redemption. She cares about our healing & desires it so that we may grow in deep intimacy with her son.

May we call upon the intercession of the Mother of the Redeemer today on the Solemnity of the Annunciation to ask for her aid in our own redemption & healing.