Faith: Finding God amid depression

DEPRESSION sears the soul. So do the memories that may prompt it — memories that may remain with you for a lifetime, irrespective of how hard you are attempting to inform yourself that they belong up to now and will stay there.

I even have an everlasting memory of a selected moment once I fell prey to depression. It was triggered by certainly one of many failed attempts to get to know my father. I had turned up unannounced, only to be met with the door being slammed in my face, and, as I used to be leaving, my very own reflection repeated into infinity by mirrors on either side of the hallway. It was a visible echo of the slamming door as they threw my very own reflection back to me into what appeared like eternity.

MOST individuals who have experienced depression, whether only occasionally or as a lifelong condition, will recognise the double-mirror effect that it has on the way in which we see ourselves. They will comprehend it for the way in which it distorts an individual’s sense of price, and even of their personhood: replicating, but additionally confining and limiting who you think yourself to be, in an infinite cycle of destructively repetitive thoughts in regards to the self you could have learned to hate, to the purpose that you just cannot bear the sound of your personal name.

Depression robs you of personhood, so you think yourself to be unnameable. It follows that you could have no place in anyone’s story — or at the very least not within the story of somebody who matters to you and on whom you might depend for a basic validation of your existence — a parent, or God, perhaps.

I THINK the story of Christ’s descent into hell on Holy Saturday has much to show us about managing depression. He descends into the hell of our own non-being once we experience depression at its worst, when it becomes an abyss of loneliness and sometimes of despair, where those of their darkest moments consider suicide.

If, in these dark moments, we are able to keep our eyes trained on Jesus, we see that he meets one, or possibly two, individuals at the underside of the pit into which he has descended. First, Adam: the archetype of the human condition in the case of that state of alienation from God and from all living beings which is commonly experienced within the worst moments of depression; second, poor old Judas, who believed himself to be beyond redemption, unnameable and unforgivable. He also meets us there, once we consider ourselves to be beyond redemption.

IF WE are to talk of God’s anger, in regard to human folly and sinfulness, it’s more prone to be brought on by our determination to consider that we’re beyond redemption — and thereby beyond forgiveness — than by any thought, word, or deed that’s inherently sinful.

God’s anger, if that’s what we are able to call it, is more prone to be brought on by our wilful determination to be left alone to lick our wounds, like Job; or Jonah, sitting under his tree and refusing to be comforted when it’s suddenly gone; or Judas, who despairs of forgiveness and condemns himself to a hell of his own making.

In our worst moments of alienation from God, or from one other person, we wish things to be that way. We make a hell for ourselves, a hell that may shape itself to each type of grief and to each incident of loss or abandonment. But Christ pursues us to the farthest reaches of our own hells, defying the constraints of time as we comprehend it. He pursues us just like the poet Francis Thompson’s hound of heaven, “down the nights and down the times. . . Down the arches of the years. . . Down the labyrinthine ways Of my very own mind.”

JONAH, Judas, Adam, and Job — each, in their very own way, believes himself to be alone within the hell he has made for himself. But none of those persons are alone. Christ’s descent into hell on Holy Saturday refutes that concept all the time. Hell as a spot of everlasting alienation and despair won’t ever be the identical again. After Holy Saturday, it’ll be only what we make it.

We are faced with the alternative — or temptation — to make a hell for ourselves, or other people, or for any created being, every minute of every single day. In this respect, we live in an everlasting present, waiting for Emmanuel to come back once more to our rescue. The name Emmanuel, “God with us”, is just not emptied of meaning on Holy Saturday, the day when God appears to be absent. It is accomplished.

THIS is where praying with icons could be helpful. Icons, especially icons of the resurrection, are a reminder of the way in which history itself has been accomplished and healed. In his grasping of the hand of Adam, or of Judas, Jesus effects an ultimate reparation. What is lost is now found. What was broken is now mended. All things are made recent.

Icons are also personal. In hearing our name, as we contemplate the icon, we’re also invited to enter into the loneliness of others — practically, wherever this is feasible, but additionally by being present to all those that are secretly despairing; who consider themselves to be utterly alone. Christ grasps their hand without them having even to proffer it. If they’re willing to listen, even for a second, they may hear their name being called, as Mary Magdalene heard hers outside the empty tomb.

THE moment when Mary Magdalene hears her name called echoes or pre-figures the redemption of all things. Every time we allow ourselves to listen to the risen Christ call our name is the final word vanquishing of the powers of hell — nevertheless they manifest themselves in our lives.

The incarnation begins with the decision of an angel to a young girl, and together with her response. It finds its completion within the response of Mary Magdalene, in her uttering of the name by which she knew the Teacher, because it is echoed down through the ages within the hearts and minds of those that recognise and answer Christ once they, too, of their darkest moments, hear their very own name being called.

The Revd Dr Lorraine Cavanagh is an creator, and a priest within the Church in Wales. Her latest book is Silence in Ordinary: Contemplative living for busy people (Ameo Books, 2025).

lorrainecavanagh.com