A retreat on the theme of “the story depression tells and the story Christianity tells” rang in the ears and hearts of us attendees. We’d asked John Bentley Mays, author of In the Jaws of the Black Dogs, to give this retreat.  Having kindly agreed, he gave generously of himself.  

He’d suffered from the illness since his youth.  In the book, by the skill of his pen, he opened the door and invited the reader into his experience of depression.  In later life, he’d become Christian.  In the retreat, by the light of his faith, he invited attendees into his experience of Christian life.

He was one of those people whose words shone through personal witness. Written in his body and soul, it seemed, was “the story Christianity tells,” etched into the places that depression had somehow carved out.

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He alerted us to the “certainty” of “the story depression tells.”  Thus, for example: “the world is better without you; nobody cares about you; you’re worthless; nothing will ever change; it’s pointless to carry on.”  It lays its burden, heavier and heavier, remorselessly upon the soul and body of the afflicted person.   The Gospel story, by contrast, doesn’t speak with that kind of grim certainty that everything is inexorably fixed. The Gospel proclaims, invites, encourages, woos, shows. It does not put nails through our hands and feet. 

Depression tells its story persistently and comprehensively, working its way into every aspect of a person’s life. As to the story depression tells and the one Christianity tells: One of them is lying, its lie strengthened by partial truths. The other leads us to truth and freedom.  Which is which? How can we tell?

For the depressed person, and those close to him, it can be exceedingly difficult to sort out.  The lying certainty of depression can be beguiling, and seemingly take over mind, body and spirit. And so John challenged his hearers at the retreat. Can we tell the story Christianity tells, he asked, in at least as many ways and places as depression tells its story? 

This challenge he left us with calls us even more today. Can we, in our time and place, tell the Christian story to the particular person who needs it?  Can we tell it to the society that’s succumbing to the certainty of depression? How is our society today weaving for us the “certainty” that keeps us locked in?

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This is not to suggest that depression isn’t a real illness, an illness that kills, as John reminded us vividly. Nor can words alone combat it, much as we might wish that to be the case and try very hard to persuade people out of depression.  Depression is a physical, mental and emotional reality which burdens many and from which not everyone recovers.  All of us have to contend with this situation. How do we knead the telling and living of the Christian proclamation into people marked by depression’s story? What difference does it make?

John himself, in life and now in death, forbids us from concluding it makes no difference. Christ brings life into (not instead of) death, not forgetting death but reworking it. For those who live with depression, for those who die from it, for those who love them, the words of Psalm 88 can ring true: “My one companion is darkness,” along with Christ’s dying cry:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But whatever the depths these words come from, other words are there too: “Awake, my soul, awake lyre and harp, I will awake the dawn!” (Psalm 57).  From John’s Prologue: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Depression seems to work its way into everything, but the Christian narrative penetrates places that depression doesn’t know or dream of, by word and sacrament, deed and image. 

How can we help each other to hear it? How can we bring it into the suffering of the depressed person?

At the retreat, an attendee asked John if he felt any gratitude for depression, given all that had been wrought in his life through the long struggle.  “No,” he replied without missing a beat. “If I could have lived my life without it, I would have.”  He wasn’t afraid of reality, and didn’t mix up the narratives. We don’t need to edit out the hard parts—the truth reaches there and farther.

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In the retreat, and in his life story, we saw how John lived the paschal mystery. We saw in him what Pope Francis called “the saint next door.”  He showed how the Easter proclamation doesn’t omit Good Friday but tells its part in the true story of suffering and death, forgiveness, renewal and new life.  

On the fiftieth day after Easter, the day of Pentecost, the apostles told the whole story publicly for the first time—and the Church was born. Pentecost is about the making of fearful and broken people into saints.