Depression and Discouragement, the ‘Virtues”of the Devil

“Idleness walks with slowness, so all vices strike it.” (St. Augustine)

Gaudium Press English Edition

Newsdesk (18/05/2022 10:22 AM, Gaudium Press) This week, watching Fr. Ricardo Basso’s livestream on the Consecration to Our Lady – always a source of learning and enthusiasm, even for those who are not taking the course with him – I was struck by a phrase he quoted: “Discouragement is the virtue of the devil.” 

At first, I liked the attribution of a virtue to the evil one, because we always think of the devil as an entity devoid of any attribute, forgetting his origin. He is an angel, and an angel of high hierarchical constitution, therefore, he was endowed with many virtues. The problem is that he did not correspond to them, letting himself be carried away by pride and envy. If these two pestilential wounds caused an angel of light to fall, what does it not do to us, poor mortals?

Once fallen, and taking with him his retinue of minions – because everything that is not good always has a legion of followers – he was not satisfied, wounded in his pride, when he was defeated by St. Michael, whom he certainly considered inferior, especially since the brave Archangel was the potential follower and protector of the one yet to come, Mary. One more reason for the dragon to feel humiliated and enraged, because, being an angel, he had the power to foresee that, in the future, he would have to bow to the power of a simple woman, who would be constituted Queen of men and angels.

Abortion: a woman’s right?

And when I say a “simple woman”, I am not in any way belittling the feminine gender, but speaking of the simplicity proper to Mary Most Holy, the humblest of creatures, still a girl when she was visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who showed herself so docile to the sublime mission of bringing God Himself into the world.

I can imagine this happening nowadays, a young orphan girl, perhaps not yet married, just promised in marriage, expecting a child who is not her future husband’s. She would have all the legal support to have an abortion. Not that I want to compare Our Lady to a woman who feels entitled to have an abortion because “she is the one in charge of her body”, but what I try to imagine is the nature of the children who were prevented from being born. Many could be ordinary people, like most of us, but how many geniuses, how many saints, how many beings capable of changing for the better the destiny of the world who ended up in a waste bucket because their mothers had the right to decide!

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Well, but that was just a digression, forgive me, it’s just that perhaps I have not yet fully digested the frustration of the “Catholic to watch” president of the United States in the face of the defeat of the abortion rights bill in the US Senate. As the Catholic he claims to be, Mr. Joe Biden should be celebrating and not so frustrated with this result, accusing Republican senators of having “chosen to oppose the right of American women to make the most personal decisions about their bodies, their families, and their lives.

And while I’m on this subject – sometimes words take on a life of their own, please forgive me – I’ll take this opportunity to also insert the information from the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She commented that eliminating abortion access for women would have very detrimental effects on the U.S. economy, preventing some women from completing their education, reducing their lifetime earning potential, and keeping some out of the labour force. Some things even the devil, who causes them, doesn’t understand!

The worst discouragement

But let’s get back to our focus, discouragement, the devil’s virtue, with which he manages to take to his dominion a countless number of souls. How many people, including Catholics, proclaim that they are discouraged? Poor priests must be tired of hearing this complaint by now. People are discouraged with marriage, with their children; and the children, discouraged with their studies, with life, with the family structure. We live in a universe of discouraged people.

People lie down to sleep and do not pray, do not examine their conscience about their day, because they are despondent and depressed; then they give their retinas over to the harmful blue light of their cell phones — until they fall asleep because they become disheartened to see the same things over and over again. In the morning, when the cell phone wakes them up, too dejected to get out of bed, they click the snooze button and stay there as long as they can without sleeping, but also without being able to overcome the despondency of getting up to start living the blessing of another day.

Many are dismayed by increasing prices – and who isn’t?. But discouraged to the point that they have no initiative to react. The price of a pound of carrots, tomatoes or steak. People go to the market, buy all this, and leave discouraged, unable to use their creativity and substitute what is costing an absurd amount for cheaper products that are as nutritious or tasty as the abusively priced ones. They are discouraged even from considering it!

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Some who work are depressed by their jobs. Those who are unemployed are too dispirited to look for a job. Those who have no money are discouraged that they don’t have any, and those who do have money are discouraged by the losses on their investments.

Everyone seems to have a reason to be depressed, and those who have none are depressed because they have nothing to be depressed about. And in the meantime, the enemy swims along, effortlessly gathering those who are not willing to resist him. And so, the dispondency spreads more than the coronavirus, and for this, there is no lockdown, masks or vaccine that will help! Not even Tylenol will do!

However, of all the discouragements, there is one that is by far the worst: the abandonment of religion. Discouragement from going to Mass is worse than the plague. It is so contagious. And takes the most varied of forms: the car breaks down when it is time to leave the house to go to church; relatives and friends decide to pay a visit right at the moment when the family was overcoming the discouragement to leave and go to Church. When it coms to pray the rosary, then, mercy! By the third Hail Mary the person is yawning and looking with despair at all the bills that still need to be opened… Discouragement to go to confession, discouragement to talk. Discouragement to think about discouragement in order to overcome it.

Fight Depression back!

Saint Teresa wrote in her memoirs: “Faced with such a situation, I am tempted by discouragement, but I realize that discouragement is also the effect of pride. Therefore, my God, I want to base my hope on you alone! Since you can do everything, deign to give birth to the virtue I desire in my soul”.

And St. Augustine, with whose words we opened this article, shows us that idleness, the beloved daughter of discouragement, walks slowly and, for this reason, is affected by all vices. This same saint told us that “it is not enough to do good things, we must do them well”. Perhaps this is where the empire of discouragement begins. We stop doing things well, and then we stop doing them altogether. When we realize that discouragement has already settled over us, and everything becomes difficult, life begins to seem dull and meaningless. By giving in to depression, people kill themselves, marriages end, careers are destroyed, friendships fall apart, and souls loose Heaven.

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Discouragement requires an action, an answer to match it: hope, as Saint Theresa says. Hope based on Jesus. Hope that translates into confidence and trust. As St. Paul said, who had all the reasons in the world to give in to discouragement, but did not, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13).

If we are to quote the Apostle, we can also say that we can do nothing in that one who discourages us. And he uses and will continue to use this anti-virtue on all of us. Many fall for the most different sins. There is a huge contingent of human beings who commit adultery, cheat, kill, steal, lie, deceive, corrupt and let themselves be corrupted without caring, without having a problem of conscience. These are already won ground, and only God and Our Lady are concerned about them, always open to their repentance and conversion. The devil already has them, so he ignores them. Who matters to him is you, me,  our families, those who pray, those who repent, those who care. Focusing on these, he subtly perfects his marketing, causing good people, (those trying to be upright, trying to cultivate good values and fond of the good), to simply become discouraged.

It is indisputable that there are people who are sick, whose discouragement is pathological. However, I am referring here to billions of dispondent people. Not all of our emotional woes can be classified as depression. It is, above all, a preternatural influence, and if we do not cling to faith, if we do not react, if we do not ask Our Lady, our guardian angels and the saints who assist us for help, we will unfortunately be defeated. We will be a defeated multitude, in a silent war that, without using any bullets and without shedding a single drop of blood, will claim more victims than all of the most powerful nuclear bombs put together.

By Afonso Pessoa

Compiled by Roberta MacEwan

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