An Apostolate of Persons with Chronic Illness and/or Disability

From my journal, kept since my diagnosis, I noted in the beginning: “I feel like everything I do now is somehow connected to my being sick. If I’m happy, it is because I’m manic; if I am sad, it is because I am depressed. I don’t want to think that every time I have an emotion, every time I get angry with someone, it is because I am ill. Some of my feelings are justified. My husband and my son say I am a different person every day, but that’s me!”

In reviewing a past mood cycle from my journal, the hypo-mania felt good to me. I felt like I was finally getting there in my life. I didn’t feel at all like there was anything wrong with me, it felt great, and I had been feeling bad for so long.

Research has noted that many people enjoy their high periods. The highs, especially if they are accompanied by euphoria and grandiosity, feel quite good. When in this state, you feel productive, driven, on top of things, cheerful, and invulnerable. Who wouldn’t enjoy this state? However, not everyone experiences mania as a happy state. It can also be a wired, pressured, irritable state. Even with negative mania, those with the disorder resent the idea that their moods are under the control of medication. No one likes the feeling of being under the control of a substance. Some people with bipolar disorder might think of their disorder medication in the same way they might think of painkillers: You take them only when you are hurting, and you stop taking them once the pain disappears.

In a past mood cycle, I thought of getting off of my medication. After all, I was feeling great. However, I had to recognize that people with bipolar disorder have underlying chemical predispositions that require them to take medicine on an ongoing basis for preventative purposes for the rest of their lives.

Getting on with your life burdened with bipolar disorder is not easy. Despite the toll that bipolar disorder can take on your family and work life, you can learn to cope effectively in both settings. Coping involves being comfortable with your own understanding of the disorder. As I iterated at the beginning, there is no magic bullet for bipolar disorder and there is no guarantee that you will be free of episodes even if you do take mood stabilizers. But, the chances are good that you will remain well over longer periods and have less severe episodes.

I was fortunate to find a counselor that has worked with me through many ups and downs throughout our time together. She encourages me to learn about the disorder and learn from myself through my journal. In the beginning, I thought that keeping a journal was just too much work. But, as I have been able to note in this piece, my journal allows me to look back and to be proactive in my treatment.

Therapy is often difficult to find on an economic sliding scale, but I would recommend trying to find someone to talk with that understands the clinical side of the disorder – very important. As I stressed at the beginning, the disorder is tricky, the symptoms mimic other disorders and taking mood stabilizer medications are a must for some of us. Get consistent medical treatment and know that you can cope with the disorder on a day-to-day basis. Though it poses many challenges that are hard for everyone in your family to understand, you can have a decent life with your disorder. In one book I read, “I have learned to manage my disorder rather than being managed by it.” That has become my daily affirmation together with a nice, long walk with no radio.

Sue Mees, EGL - 2

The following blog entry will be presented in two parts.  The second part of this article will be presented tomorrow. 

I am a bipolar adult. It seems that bipolar disorder has become a catchall for troubling, questionable or bizarre behavior. In my experience, bipolar disorder is the most difficult mental disorder to diagnose because it mimics other disorders. Bipolar disorder is often called “manic depression.” It is a mood disorder. The normal force that guides our behavior becomes intensified in mania and diminished in depression.

People with bipolar disorder have distinct experiences that point to their mood disorder. Varying emotional states and changes in energy, judgment, thinking, and sleep characterize the swings between the poles. One person’s depression might be another’s normal reaction to a stressful life event. One person’s manic episode might be another’s normally rapid speech pattern or naturally exuberant personality.

Psychiatrists and psychologists usually think of bipolar disorder as a set of symptoms. Differential diagnosis is a systematic compare-and-contrast method. For a bipolar disorder diagnosis, a set of symptoms must be present in clusters (more than one at a time) and last for a certain period of time. Most often the “clusters” or “episodes” have a classic beginning phase, a somewhat middle phase in which symptoms are at their worst; and a recovery phase.

Missing a bipolar diagnosis has destructive effects on life. Untreated, bipolar disorder grows steadily worse over time. Not only does this disorder cost you years during which you could be free of mania and depression, but it might also cost you the ability to ever get the disorder under control. No one wants to hear that he or she has a chronic, lifelong mental illness, especially one that carries a stigma. When stressors reach a certain level, these biological vulnerabilities or predispositions get expressed as the symptoms you are already familiar with –irritable mood, racing thoughts, paralyzing sadness, and or/sleep disturbance.

When people with bipolar disorder say that they have always been moody, they are right. Bipolar people often have a love/hate relationship with their moods. They hate the fact that their moods fluctuate so wildly, and particularly resent the lows, but mood variations are also central to those who they are and how they experience life. But the key point is that their moodiness may reflect the biochemical imbalance underlying the disorder rather than character or personality. What can look like personality traits can really be ongoing symptoms of your disorder that require more aggressive medical or psychological treatment.

Learning that you have an illness that will recur and that requires rethinking your life goals is extraordinarily painful. The underlying denial of bipolar disorder, as in “grieving the lost healthy self,” those newly diagnosed most often become resentful and start yearning for who they used to be. Once their illness is diagnosed and people around them start treating them like a “mental patient,” they become resentful and have deep feelings of loss over the dramatic changes the illness has brought. Sometimes people who deny the disorder say it is because they are confused about where normal mood variation ends and the bipolar illness begins.

- Sue Mees, EGL - 2

So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world, as you hold on to the word of life, so that my boast for the day of Christ may be that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. (Philippians 2:12-16)

This passage always makes me get tears in my eyes because it always makes me think about our time and what we are doing. How many of us do not grumble from time to time about things we have to do? Or how may of us never question God’s will?

As I read this reading yesterday, I think it hit me even more what St. Paul was saying. I have wondered much lately about whether we are hanging on to the Word of Life and whether we are really trying to live it? Are we being a light to the world? As for being without blemish and innocent in the sight of God, I am sure I can’t say that about myself. How many times have I not spoken up when I should have done so.

In the last verse St. Paul says, “So that my boast may be that I did not run or labor in vain.” This line always gets to me because as soon as I read it I think about how I have come up short in living the Gospel message, and I think of all that they went through to spread it. We all need to remember to shine our light and hold on to the Word of Life because we line in a crooked generation. While there is much that is good in the world there is also much that is evil. We need to make sure we are the salt of the earth as our dear Lord said. If the Apostles and the early Christians strove to do it in their time amidst the persecutions, then we can do it to. On the day of judgement, Our Lord will invite us to the feast if we are wearing the wedding garment. Then St. Paul and the other apostles can say that they did not run and labor in vain. May we all shine our light. Amen.

 Stephanie May, EGL - 6

Peering through the mist of instant gratification and into the fog of rationalization, the culture has capsized in the shallow waters of self-indulgence. Rather than reason, these insatiable appetites shape the culture. Tragically, alive in the land is a demonic energy which is defined as everything but what it actually is — new age immorality. This leaves society inundated with the banal and the obscene. The great sin is the desire to rationalize what we want to do as good, particularly when it is not.

Yet the modern culture is secure in its notional infallibility. In contrast, Father George Rutler sees it quite differently, “The very concept of modernity is a noticeably arrogant form of self-contradiction: claiming to be the final judge of a vast wisdom and the highest court of appeal, for the ages, while being younger and more sprightly than any other age.” Alas, truth is often filtered by time and place. Columnist, Thomas Sowell, asserts, “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” This was fomented by a modern non-judgmental mentality. This prescription dismantled the conventions of civilized society.

Consequently, moral torpor produced a feverish hedonism by surrendering to the will of the unscrupulous. Hedonism has had an immense impact on the modern world. The sexual revolution advocated free love and liberation from sexual repression thereby promoting illicit sexual activity as a recreational choice, not something evil.

However, Robert McElvaine provides a more straightforward assessment, “Free love is the supreme oxymoron. Someone who is genuinely in love cannot be free, to be in love is to be connected, tied, bound to another…totally free people can have sex, but never love, because to have love is to give up freedom.”

The removal of these restraints produced unforeseen cultural catastrophes. First, the rapid decline in civility, fidelity, morality, shame, and mutual respect became evident. The more catastrophic consequences are promiscuity, multiple sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, divorce, single parent homes, depression, substance abuse and suicides.

Many are appalled by these cultural innovations and hunger for a more ancestral fare of moral absolutes. Should these absolutes be exhumed, they could restore conventional society through their principled nature. Thoreau mused, “Who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle?” Secular sophistication has reduced the public appetite to the lowest common denominator. Fulton Sheen told us, “Right is right if nobody’s right, and wrong is wrong if everybody’s wrong.”

Granted, change is inevitable, but it should aim to improve the common good, not indulge in rapturous novelty. The challenge is to reform, revitalize, and preserve the good and jettison the obsolete and in doing so, rebuild the foundations of personal, familial, and civic responsibilities. Two of the principle building blocks of civilization are restraint and the understanding of a dependence upon Divine authority.

What was formerly known as common sense has been replaced with an accommodating broadmindedness. Once, free speech and the truth were widely expressed. Now Richard John Neuhaus argues, “In our culture, the one truth imposed upon almost everybody is that you must never impose your truth on others.” He also allowed, “The truth is that we do not judge the truth, the truth judges us.”

Did Mahatma Gandhi forecast the current culture? ”The things that will destroy us are politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.” Apparently, he did.

Dan Shea, EGL-2

He immediately received his sight and followed him, giving glory to God. (Luke 18:43)

If you comb through the Gospels, you will find many stories of Jesus giving sight to the blind. Just the other day, Stephanie May wrote of her favorite story from the Gospel of St. John of the man born blind. Each of the Gospels highlights this particular healing miracle of Jesus. St. Luke places one such story toward the end of the Gospel just outside of Jericho.

The fact that Jesus healed a blind man in Jericho might seem like an insignificant detail. This is hardly the truth. Jericho is located at the base of the mountain on which the city of Jerusalem is built. Jesus had to pass through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. It was nine chapters ago in St. Luke’s Gospel that we read that Jesus had resolutely set his path toward Jerusalem. His hour had come. In Jerusalem lay the culmination of his life and ministry. He was going to Jerusalem to die on a cross for the sins of all humankind.

On his way, he meets a blind beggar. When the man asks Jesus to heal his lack of sight, Jesus accommodates his request. St. Luke is very careful to tell us that the man followed Jesus.

We don’t hear any more about the blind beggar. We don’t know whether he followed Jesus all the way to Jerusalem or not. That’s really not the point. Having been healed, the man felt it was his obligation to follow Jesus no matter where he was going. Perhaps he was a witness to the events that were to take place there. Perhaps he was one of the bystanders at the scene of the crucifixion. Again, the important thing is that he followed Jesus. He realized that the gift of healing placed an obligation upon him. He “saw” his duty and followed.

Each of us needs healing. While the gift of healing us of our chronic illnesses and disabilities would be ever so sweet, I wonder whether we would be up to the obligation that it would place upon us. Actually, we can answer that question quite easily. If we are able to follow Jesus now, we would be able to follow him then. The point is, “Are we following Jesus?” I know that in my own life there have been so many times that I have chosen to go my own way. I suspect that this would still be the case even if I were free of all disability.

The Gospel challenges us today. Are we up to the challenge?

- Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

The parable that we hear today, the so-called “Parable of the Talents,” is a difficult parable to discuss and to understand. For so many years, even hundreds of years, this Scripture passage has been understood as a way to look at our relationship with a God who expects us to produce a healthy return on His investment in us. Scripture scholarship has pointed out the flaws in this kind of interpretation.

A talent, talanton in Greek, was a weight of measure and a unit of currency. Although there is some disagreement on the exact amount of money that it represents, it always was a huge amount of money, perhaps as much as 6,000 days’ wages. So we are not talking about dealing with small matters or a meager amount of money. Using this as a benchmark, one of the servants was given ten talents – 60,000 days’ wages. So the first question we have to ask ourselves is almost comical. Is there any other reference or place in the Gospels where Jesus commends someone for making this kind of profit? I know that many homilies have looked at parable as a way to speak of God’s investment in our “talents,” our abilities. However, this begs the question. We cannot interpret the parable using the English language. It didn’t even exist when Jesus was living.

At the same time, we listen to the “third” servant who offers as a rationale for his behavior the fact that he new that his master was a “hard man,” harvesting where he did not sow, and gathering where he did not scatter. He was afraid of his master. So we must ask ourselves if Jesus ever spoke of God in this way? Did Jesus think of his Almighty Father in such harsh terms?

The culture of the world of Jesus was a subsistence culture and Jesus usually spoke to poor people. What would their reaction be to a man who was able to double such a huge investment. This was a people who believed that there was a limited amount of every created thing and that it had all been distributed by God. The Torah forbade usury or interest on a loan. If someone gained more than what he already had, he was thought of as a thief. How would such people react to this parable? Could Jesus have preached a parable in which the master expected the servant to go against the Torah and exact interest on an investment?

There is a similar parable in the Gospel of Luke which involves a man who travels to a distant country to gain a crown. While he is gone, he leaves his fortune in the hands of his stewards. The people send a delegation after the man to tell the foreign power that they do not want him as their king. When he returns with the crown, he not only rewards the servants who double his investment, he also commands that those who tried to thwart his purpose be brought in and killed before his eyes. Scholars tell us that this is a story about how Herod gained his crown. Certainly Jesus would not have found anything good in Herod.

The morale of the story is a variation on the old dictum, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Again, this is not something of which Jesus would approve.

Taking all of this evidence together, one cannot escape the conclusion that this is not someone or a situation we should emulate, nor could Jesus have meant it so. It is time for us to reexamine our understanding of this parable, to ask ourselves whether it isn’t really the third servant, the badly maligned servant, whom Jesus is commending. Isn’t this more in line with his preaching? Jesus has told his disciples in other places in the Gospel that they will not fare well by the world’s standards, that they will be persecuted, slandered, maligned, berated, and even killed by their enemies. It seems to me that it is the third servant who really is the hero of the story. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that finds the gathering of wealth a good thing. It is the rich people of this world that we often admire. We live in a world that believes in the Gospel of Profit, not the Gospel of the Cross.

Draw your own conclusions.

- Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M.

After a two week hiatus, our Sunday Scriptures return to St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. Not surprisingly, the letter is once again confronting the issue of Jesus’ return. Remember that this letter is the first that St. Paul wrote which now forms the canon of the New Testament. It is probably true to say that there was no more pressing issue in the early Church than the question of Jesus’ return. St. Paul’s early preaching stressed the “imminent” return of Jesus.

Here we are approximately two thousand years later. For some people this question is still very important. Predictions about the end times are frequently the province of evangelists and would-be prophets who read the Scriptures and find in them indications that the end is near. Actually, the Scriptures are fairly clear about this issue:

“But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. (Mark 13:32-33)

Concerning times and seasons, brothers, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2)

In other words, spending time trying to figure out when Jesus will return is nothing more than a waste of precious time.

One of the side effects of this preoccupation is, however, a problem that can be devastating. Those who believe that the end is imminent will often use that so-called fact to justify their belief that there is no need to care for the problems of this world: poverty, racism, oppression, pollution, legalized abortion, etc. If the return of Jesus is imminent, then why spend time dealing with problems that Jesus will undoubtedly take care of when he returns.

Just recently a woman told me that I did not need to preach about the need to care for the poor. “God will take care of the poor,” she maintained, “the Scriptures tell us that God will care for them. We do need to trouble ourselves with that issue.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact St. Paul gives us some fairly clear instructions about the kind of activity we need to be engaged in while we are waiting for Jesus’ return: We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, cheer the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient with all. See that no one returns evil for evil; rather, always seek what is good (both) for each other and for all. (1 Thessalonians 5:14-15) Indeed, it would seem that part of being sober and awake is the call to be industrious.

- Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. (John 9:1-3)

I must admit that this is my favorite gospel passage of all time because of what Jesus says here. I wish anyone who has a disability, no matter how bad that disability, would read this bible passage. While the whole story is important, this line is, for me personally, the most impressive. I must give the disciples credit here for at least having the sense to ask why such things happened, to check if what they thought was correct.

There are people that live in the world today that think very much like the people of Jesus, time. They think that children with disabilities don’t deserve a chance at life. However, they were created for a special job; we all are. Although God does not actually cause the disability, God allows it to happen for a reason.

I think the way God’s power is made visible through us is when we achieve goals that the doctors and others think we will never achieve. I have a friend who was born with the most severe form of spina bifida. She also has kidney issues. When she was born, the doctors said she would be a vegetable and would never be able to talk or communicate. Well, she is doing everything they said she wouldn’t be able to do. I am able to walk without a cane or any other support in nice weather. When I was growing up, I never thought that was possible. So God does use us in a very dramatic way at times to show the world that God is in charge and can do anything no matter what we humans think.

So you see, my fellow CUSANS, we are all special because God made us and has a purpose for our lives. God,’s power is made perfect in our weakness. It is, therefore, possible to celebrate the fact that you have a disability because, as hard as it is to deal with at times, we are special to God.

Stephanie May, EGL

Good marriages are the product of genuine love for each other and the Creator. The true joy of marriage is sharing one’s life. When two people agree to share their entire lives together, they expect better not worse, richer not poorer, and good health not sickness. Yet all marriages experience a variety of these contrasts. As problems overtake them, couples need to share their fears, frustrations and failures to establish the honesty that marriage requires. As real identities emerge, they prepare the ground for building a successful union.

Marriage requires the best possible beginning. Those built on solid principles will survive. Shared values, personal integrity, mutual respect, and complete trust in God are the foundation. The performance of His will is the cornerstone. The framework of success goes up with each act of cooperation and sacrifice. The windows of this estate are clear with honesty and bright with humility, but it is love that makes a house a home. Its occupants practice the old adage of “praying together to stay together,” which provides home insurance.

Most failed marriages are a result of a lack of moral integrity and spiritual neglect. Couples must communicate with their Maker if they are to communicate and remain with each other. Good communication affords both husbands and wives a joint understanding of their individual and shared roles. Individual roles are best defined by mutual agreement rather than by convention, and must be redefined over time. Shared roles of parenting, providing, and perpetuating the tranquility of the marriage require constant attention. Helping hands and muted tongues are two of the tools of an enduring marriage.

Partners working together decide what is important in terms of family, professional, social, and spiritual goals. Both must understand what price each is willing to pay to attain these goals, be it relocation, long hours, and/or separation. An honest discussion of their individual moral boundaries will determine the extent of each partner’s willingness to proceed in pursuing these goals. Marriage should be the centerpiece of couples lives, and its nourishment and preservation their foremost priority recognizing being of “one flesh” is an indelible state.

A good marriage includes respect, trust, loyalty, sacrifice and commitment. A couple’s commitments define that which they respect and honor. The sacrifices of marriage will affect one’s pride, options, possessions, time, and spiritual advancement. Yet self-sacrifice seeks no reward; it is the essence of love.

However, it is unrealistic to think love will not be tested by crisis. True love is proven in crisis. Sacramental marriage with its vows, promises, and God’s grace is what holds couples together in times of stress. Lovers are united through various trials and mutual sacrifice. Most sacrifice is an exchange of immediate gratification for a higher good to be enjoyed later.

Matrimonial oneness requires a mingling of body, mind, and soul. Even couples that are complete opposites have the potential for oneness as unified spirits. Distinct from the power of love and intimacy, the realization that God’s will is working within them draws couples together while allowing them to remain individuals in a triangle of love.

Dan Shea, EGL- 2

The story of the ten lepers from the Gospel of St. Luke is one of the traditional texts used for Thanksgiving Day. However, I wonder whether the story is really about gratitude. The details that St. Luke includes in the story seem to be pointing to the possibility of a different purpose.

Of course, we all remember that St. Luke is writing for a Gentile audience. He mentions very explicitly that the one former leper to return to Jesus was a Samaritan, not exactly a Gentile, but certainly an outsider. Jesus also asks about the whereabouts of the other ten. Surely he knew where they were. After all, he sent them to the Temple. Therein lies the possibility that the Gospel text is really talking about the inadequacies of the Law.

First of all, let us recall that leprosy cut these men off from all other society. In no other circumstance would a Samaritan be an acceptable companion. However, because they were all lepers, they were all outside of, excluded from the Law and its observance. They were contagious, unsafe, not-to-be-trusted individuals who had banded together because of a common plight. Interestingly, St. Luke tells us that there were ten of them. In other words, they formed a “minion,” the minimum number required for a praying assembly.

Once they were healed, the Samaritan is once again regarded as an unacceptable companion. Now that the nine Jewish former lepers have been healed, the Law dictates that they must go to the priests in the Temple in order to be declared “clean.” After offering the required sacrifice as a sin offering, they were able, perhaps for the first time in years, to return to their families. However, the Samaritan would not have been welcome in the Temple, and the Law didn’t apply to him anyway. Because he is free to do as he chooses, he returns to Jesus and offers his thanks and adoration.

While it is true that only one former leper returns to give thanks, I believe the Gospel is trying to teach us a dynamic lesson. There is more here than a simple reminder to be grateful. The Gospel is teaching us that the Law, the covenant between God and the people dating from the days of Sinai and Moses, has become a means for excluding others – a serious indictment. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, we hear the prophets reminding the Israelites that God is the God of all the world, not just their little corner of it. The Samaritan, the outcast, is the one who is held up as an example of faith and gratitude.

Illness and disability often become reasons for exclusion. Many are simply not comfortable around those who are differently able. Like the nine former lepers who have no room for the cleansed Samaritan, people cut themselves off from others when faced with such differences. Unfortunately, they also cut themselves off from Jesus as well. Notice that it is the excluded one who gains the praise of Jesus for his “gratitude attitude.”

- Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator