Anonymous Angels

Behold, angels came and ministered to Him (Mt 4:11) 

 

On November 5th, right after halftime against the Hawks, I had a panic attack.

It came out of nowhere. I’d never had one before. I didn’t even know if they
were real. But it was real—as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle.
Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my
mental health has changed. 

 

In an essay in The Player’s Tribune, Cleveland Cavaliers power forward, Kevin Love, spoke about what would become a much-publicized crisis he suffered, one which resulted in him stepping away from playing basketball for a time and sparked conversations about the too-often stigmatized problems associated with mental illness.

Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at
some point or another. It’s part of life. Like [Toronto Raptors guard]
DeMar [DeRozan] said,
“You never know what that person is going through.”

Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing ...This is an everyone thing.
No matter what our circumstances, we’re all carrying around
things that hurt—and they can hurt us if we keep
them buried inside. Not talking about our
inner lives robs us of really getting to know
ourselves and robs us of the chance to reach
out to others in need.

Like Simone Biles who stepped away from a few events in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after her own crisis (not to mention numerous other professional athletes who have come forward to talk about their struggles), Love was at the top of his game when his attack occurred. Those who have even a passing understanding of athletics understand that those who compete at the elite level can do so not just because they have superior physical ability (many others have that), but because of the mental toughness they have developed to handle the pressures associated with plying their trades against other elite athletes. All while constantly being publicly scrutinized by fans. 

Night after night, Love demonstrated his considerable athletic gifts, but in sharing his story, he revealed tremendous insight and prophetic courage as well. If he and his fellow professionals can have crises, so can we. Mental health isn’t just an athlete thing: if the statistics are any indication, the struggle with mental health is an epidemic in the United States. 

According to the National Alliance for Mental Illness, better than 1 in 5 of American adults suffer from some sort of mental health disorder. These are not, of course, the run-of-the-mill “blues” or the anxiousness that accompanies moments in our lives: we are talking here about debilitating diseases which often go unacknowledged and untreated. For 1 in 20 of us, those diseases are severe.

Studies show that, for any number of reasons, 55% of adults with mental illness last year did not receive treatment. One wonders what that number would look like if all those who suffer in silence made their struggles known.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This year’s theme is “more good days together,” a theme at once suggesting that good mental health promotes community while also implying that “good days” come about when we reach out to others.

Too often, however, the unfortunate and unwarranted stigma attached to mental illness has kept people—especially those most in need—suffering in silence. Readers may be surprised to discover that Mental Health Awareness Month was established as far back as 1949. The fact that that comes as a shock to most of us suggests how deeply we have buried this problem in our social consciousness.

This week Saint Ignatius High School is launching an all-out campaign to promote mental health awareness among our faculty, staff, and, most importantly, students. Again the statistics: according to a 2019 Journal of the American Medical Association study mental illness affects more than 1 in 7 children between the ages of 6 and 17.

Yes: six-year-olds.

Couple that with the fact that among young people 10 to 24 years of age, suicide is second only to “accidental injury” as the leading cause of death*. 

Whether it’s through our own struggles or the struggles of those we love, all of us are affected by mental illness. It’s sobering.

The mental health focus week is about letting the members of our community (that includes you and me, dear reader) know that there is help available to those who are suffering. It is also about eradicating the unwarranted stigma associated with reaching out for help.

None of us would hesitate to go to a physician if we had a broken arm or were vomiting uncontrollably. Crippling depression and anxiety, not to mention other mental and emotional maladies, are just as real and debilitating as these physical ailments.

Yet at times we struggle to allow ourselves to be helped.

As always, our Catholic Faith is instructive here. Central to Christianity is Jesus’ Paschal Mystery: His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. The very events we celebrate in a special way this Easter season.

Being nailed to the cross, Jesus certainly suffered physically, but in being abandoned by His best friends (betrayed by one and vehemently denied by another), He suffered emotional pain as well. On the cross, Jesus suffered spiritual pain when he felt abandoned by His Father. Moreover, as the physician St. Luke recounted in his version of the Gospel, Jesus began sweating blood Holy Thursday night as He agonized over His impending Passion.

That phenomenon of sweating blood (known medically as hematohidrosis)—is associated, according to a WebMD summary, “with extreme physical or emotional stress, such as intense fear, agony, or severe anxiety [when] someone is under excessive stress and anxiety.”

Indeed, whatever suffering we may undergo in life—including and especially mental and emotional suffering—Jesus understands. He’s been through it.

Readers may think at this point I would encourage them to bring their mental and emotional difficulties to the Lord in prayer. I do recommend that. But I also think we need to look to Jesus as an example for how we handle the struggles we face in life. There came a point along the Via Dolorosa where Jesus—exhausted, physically broken, and bleeding—could literally no longer carry His cross. So He accepted the help of Simon of Cyrene. The cross belonged to Jesus: He needed to face it, but He knew He could not carry it alone. The Lord of the Universe, He through Whom, the Creed reminds us, “all things were made,” needed help.

And He took it.

Facing the devil and tempted in the desert, Jesus was broken emotionally and spiritually. As Matthew reminds us, “angels came and ministered to Him” (Mt 4:11). (Is it mere coincidence that when we speak of struggling against addiction, or anxiety, or depression we say we are “battling our demons”?) When He suffered the anxiety which caused Him to sweat blood, “to strengthen Him an angel from heaven appeared to Him” (Lk 22:43). 

Angels (Gk: angeloi, “messengers”), we recall, are those persons sent by God to deliver His love and aid to His people. 

That included His Divine Son, and it includes us. 

I’ve come to believe that there are “anonymous angels” in our lives: people who come to us—like the angels came to Jesus—to “strengthen” and “minister” to us in our mental and emotional need. The incarnate Second Person of the Trinity wasn’t too proud or too embarrassed to accept the help of angels: nor should we. No one should have to live with mental illness when those “angels” stand ready and eager to come to our aid. They are there for us when the difficulties of life get the best of us. We just need to recognize them:

Because while God equips some of His angels with wings and fiery swords, others He equips with degrees in psychology and overstuffed chairs.

A.M.D.G./B.V.M.H.

 

*If you or someone you know are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.