Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic
Tradition

Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.

—1 Samuel 16:7

 
“I’m not a bad person.” | Free Will | Finding the Truth: True Love | “Why did Christ have to die?” | Blood and Life | Our Broken Hearts | Obedient Service | A Psychological Test

 
hen asked about their basic psychological attitude about life, many persons will say, “I just want to feel good about myself. I want to feel loved. I want a sexual partner. I want to have fun and enjoy life. I’m not a bad person.”

On the surface, according to contemporary social standards, this attitude may seem benign and innocent. But it has deeper social implications that aren’t readily seen.

The fact is, in many of our attempts to enjoy ourselves we end up stepping all over other persons.

•	In seeking wealth we envy and compete with our neighbors, we exploit and deceive the underprivileged, and we pollute our God-given environment.
•	In seeking entertainment we encourage an industry that seduces our entire culture with frivolity, vanity, and pride.
•	In seeking sexual pleasure we spread emotional wounds, physical disease, lust, infidelity, divorce, pornography, and prostitution, along with unwanted pregnancies, abortion, foster care horrors, and child abuse.
•	In seeking excitement we create addictions and brew a criminal underground to distribute the materials of addiction.
•	In seeking happiness we’re like the eye of a hurricane, seemingly calm and peaceful, yet blind to the storm spreading chaos all around us.

And that’s what sin is all about. It’s about being completely blind to the bad things we do to others as we go about trying to feel good about ourselves. And yet we’re not bad persons.

  
Free Will

We are not bad persons. God created us as good beings to share in His great glory through our free will. Yet because of what theology calls Original Sin we find ourselves separated from a full knowledge of God—and from genuine love. After all, if we really knew love we wouldn’t step all over others and use them as objects for our own satisfaction, would we?

You could program your computer to say, “I love you” every morning when you turn it on, but that synthesized message wouldn’t be love, would it? A computer simply does what it is told to do, and, philosophically, if you cannot say “No” your saying “Yes” is meaningless.   Therefore, love must be a free choice—an act of will.   And so, when God created us to share in His glory, He gave us free will, so that we would be capable of love. But with free will comes the ability to renounce love. That is what sin amounts to: it’s a renunciation of love; it’s a turning away from moral responsibility to others that ultimately results in a separation from God.

So here we are. We’re not bad persons. And yet we do bad things to others without even seeing it.

And, in the very midst of all our searching for satisfaction and contentment in life, we afflict ourselves with anxiety and depression.

How, then, shall we ever see the truth? How shall we ever know true love?

 
Finding the Truth: True Love

Only God Himself can show us what true love is, because left to the blindness that characterizes our separation from God, we can see nothing but our own self-indulgent illusions. Left to ourselves, we have nothing but an empty world of social constructions to give us comfort. Left to ourselves, we have nothing but pride, and in that pride we are easily deceived by evil. Left to ourselves, therefore, we are lost in slavery to sin. 

Now, if God were to appear to us in His full glory, we would surely drop down before Him in terror. But we wouldn’t necessarily love Him. True love, after all, is an act of self-sacrifice offered in free will, not something engendered by fear.

Psychologically, fear refers to a narcissistic concern about possible damage to our pride and safety. In contrast, fear of God refers to our humble awe and service before God’s great glory and mercy. Thus, whereas psychological fear pulls us away from God, fear of God leads us directly into the embrace of divine love.

So, in order to teach us true love, God chose to show it to us through the life of a simple, poor man—a life which ended with the most brutal and humiliating execution known to humanity.

It was as if God said to all bystanders, those present and those yet to be, “If you can love Him, My Son, this humble, broken man hanging in weakness on that cross out of love for you, you can love anything. If you can love anything, you will know true love. And if you know true love, you will finally begin to know Me.”

After all, what, in all its blindness, does human culture tend to value? Well, look at politics, sports, and entertainment and you will see an insatiable thirst for wealth, glamor, power, competition, and revenge. So is it any wonder that to show us true love, and to bypass all human illusions, God came to us in poverty, simplicity, weakness, and gentleness?   And He took all of the insults patiently and quietly, without retaliation, all so that we could see the truth of the sin in our hearts—and repent it, in sorrow for the pain we cause to each other.   And that’s why Saint Paul said (1 Corinthians 1:23) that the crucifixion of Christ seemed like folly to the Greeks who valued the “wisdom” of natural philosophy; and to the Jews, who looked for powerful prophetic signs, the crucifixion was a stumbling block.   For neither natural wisdom nor human power can illuminate their own darkness.

 
“Why did Christ have to die?”

Still, there are those who ask, “But why did Christ have to die? What does this have to do with love? Why was there bloodshed?”

The answer is threefold.

 
1. Blood and Life

Keep in mind that blood, being an essential biological aspect of life, is therefore a symbol of life itself. Consequently, to shed blood for another person means to give up one’s own life in order to rescue or preserve the life of that other person.

When Christ shed His blood for us, then, He did so in order to give us life—that is, freedom from our bondage to sin. Christ’s death was a glorious mystery that reverberated from Heaven down to earth, for “obliterating the bond [of Original Sin] against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, He also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).

And so, before His death, Christ prayed, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to Your Son, so that Your Son may glorify You, just as You gave Him authority over all people, so that He may give eternal life to all You gave Him” (John 17:1–2).

 
2. Our “Broken” Hearts

The redemption worked in Christ’s death was an example to us. It showed us how we are capable of killing God Himself in order to preserve our own self-interests. It showed us, in a way that no event in the world has ever shown before or since, how we, in our hearts—the very hearts God has created—and through our own free will, constantly injure others and defile, mock, and execute divine love in every moment of our lives. It showed us the ugliness and sin we nurture secretly in the depths of our own broken hearts.

So unless we acknowledge the depth of sin in our hearts and choose to accept the redemption offered in His sacrifice for us—and, in humble, freely willed obedience to the will of God, die to the self-indulgent worldly attachments that nailed Him to the cross—we will never know purity of heart and true love.

Jesus loves everyone, and He calls everyone into His love. But to accept this call we must give up everything that is not love.

This is a hard thing to accept. Many disciples abandoned Christ because of it. Even today there are those who try to make the Church “relevant” to a corrupt modern world. But Christ never said that He came to make life convenient. He came to preach the Truth.

Christ was not a sentimentalist. Christ called everyone—and still calls everyone—to repentance. In His own time, many persons heard His call and obeyed. But there were many persons Christ refused to heal because they refused to acknowledge and repent their sins. There were many persons He refused as disciples because they sought worldly glory instead of Heavenly peace. There were many persons He criticized as hypocrites—Pharisees, Saduccees, and Herodians. Christ was not a sentimentalist who accepted everyone “as they are.” He revealed the truth of our brokenenss and called everyone to repent their sins. And, ultimately, many of those He offended gathered up their grudges against Him and crucified Him.

Christ was not just a “good man”—He was true God and true man whose real presence remains with us always through the Sacraments. Only in the broken bread of the Eucharist can our psychological brokenness be healed.

Classical Freudian psychoanalysis is atheistic, and so is most psychotherapy today. Even though the brilliant French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan had some familiarity with Catholicism, religion had no part in his psychoanalysis. But Lacan can teach Catholics much about psychology. To put it in a nutshell, Lacanian analysis ultimately shows you that all your identifications with the world are just empty illusions. So you start analysis with your identity like a precious porcelain vase, and you end the analysis as a naked man sitting alone in a pile of broken pottery. So that’s life, you learn, just a pile of illusions. “Go make something of it anyway,” you’re told.   So what does this have to do with Catholicism? Well, read Saint John of the Cross and you will find that his description of spiritual purgation is, in its practical effects, quite a bit like Lacan’s philosophy. The difference between the two, though, is Christ. Christ begins where Lacan ends. Lacan leaves us with the stark, bare psychological truth of our broken lives. Christ—and only Christ—can heal the brokenness. And in that gap between Lacan and Christ is precisely where I locate the relation between psychology and religion. Psychology cannot heal us, but it can help us overcome our resistance to total surrender to Christ. Once we make that surrender, our healing begins. And that is precisely what Saint John of the Cross told us.

Those who fail to preach this truth about our human brokenness and the absolute impossibility of healing ourselves through our own social identifications do no service to anyone.

Read an excerpt from a letter about repentance by Saint Clement, pope

 
 
3. Obedient Service

For Christ died also (and here’s the third part of the answer) in order to be raised again, to show us that God raises into His glory only those who, without obstinacy or presumption, without cunning or intrigue, without strife or schism, empty themselves of all their social illusions in humble, obedient service to Him.

		Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words!
		—attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi

There will always be those who resist this, those who attack the Church from without and those who sabotage it from within. Yet the choice is simple: will you freely and totally accept the redemption from your own emptiness that is being offered to you, or will you reject it for the sake of your own convenience? If you fail to approach your salvation with fear and trembling (see Philippians 2:12b) because you aren’t willing to sacrifice everything for it—as in the parables of The Treasure Buried in a Field and The Pearl of Great Price (Matthew 13:44–46)—then you probably don’t want it that much to begin with.

But if, in absolute fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church, you accept the hard work of your salvation, you will then, for the rest of your life, bear the sadness of a heart broken by the ignorance, apathy, and sacrilege that surround you. And yet, in the very midst of this pain, you will bear the joy of being able to say to Christ, “Thank you Lord; now I feel what You felt.” And that is true love. 

	My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You. I ask Your pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.
	—An angel, at Fátima, 1917

Take this psychological test just for personal enlightenment.

Imagine that you have been imprisoned—unjustly, let us assume—and that you are scheduled to be executed later this evening. You are told you may choose anything you want for your last meal. What do you choose?

You don’t have to tell me your answer—just keep in mind the things you would like to eat, and then click below to find out how to score your choices.

Credits All material on this website is copyrighted. You may copy or print selections for your private, personal use only. Any other reproduction or distribution is forbidden without my permission. All material written by: Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. Website designed by: Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. Webmaster: Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.   Spanish translations by: Anne P. provided photographs from which some of the header images on this website were adapted.