Depression gives me a prelude to complete shedding of everything personal, which I longingly await, so that He can be everything in my innermost being. It tears me away from the context in which I am expected to function and places me in a position of complete dependence. My strength to act is gone, my will is powerless – and even my desire seems bound and numbed. I am humbled to a state in which I hardly live at all. And so I begin to understand that only God keeps me alive. Only He makes blood flow in my veins. Only He makes my heart beat… He teaches me to rest in my nakedness and to hope only in Him.
(Wilfrid Stinissen OCD /1927–2013/, accepted correspondence)
