Dear Brother and Sister,

St. Paul says in Sacred Scripture: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God... will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ. (Philippians 4:6–7)

I have been a priest for 31 years, long enough to experience changes, both big and small, as well as bad and good in the human condition. For example, about 20 years into my priesthood, people started using the word anxiety to describe how they were feeling about an assortment of troubles, personally and globally. It left me feeling unprepared and playing a game of ministerial catch-up as to what people were describing and what my role was in helping parishioners.

The secular understanding of anxiety is that it is a normal emotion describing fear, tension, or worry about the future. It is only when it becomes excessive that psychologists describe anxiety as a disorder that can be treated with therapy and medications. According to Catholic teaching, anxiety is a heavy human struggle. Anxiety stems from our fragile human nature rather than moral failure. The catechism describes emotions as morally neutral. They simply well up as we deal with the world around us.

So, when facing anxiety, a Catholic clinician may stress therapy and meditation, but also a “whole person approach”. That is, prayer, the sacraments, adoration, exercise, relaxation, and so on. I can verify this as a pastor. At times, it is best that I see my beloved parish in my rear-view mirror—a needed change of scenery where I can take a breath. A simple rosary walk decreases anxiety. I have joked that after a 4-to-6-mile prayer walk, if I saw the Church on fire, I would call 911, shrug my shoulders, remove the Blessed Sacrament, and faithfully say, God is calling us to build a new church. But that’s probably not how I would respond before the walk.

It is safe to say that people all around the world suffer from anxiety. Most of that anxiety is personal and familial. Some anxiety that people feel is societal and geopolitical, which we can do little about. And of course, cable news and social media do us no favors in this regard, as they stir up tensions for ratings and to sell things. I have experienced that the developed world seems particularly stricken with crippling anxiety. As I said in my previous columns, suicide rates are much higher in the developed world as some are overwhelmed by daily pressures.

Anxiety began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned. Out of fear, they hid from God and didn’t answer Him when He called them. They were afraid of what God might do to them. On the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God told Adam that they would surely die, and since God always keeps His promises, they did eventually die. This is a tragic consequence of original sin.

From a religious perspective, at its core, anxiety is caused by the fear of death. For if we had no fear of death and what lay beyond it, we’d have no fear for ourselves other than physical pain. For example, if I knew that when I die, my death would be physically, emotionally, and mentally painless, that Heaven waited for me in all its splendor, and that there was nothing more I could do on earth toward my eternity in Heaven, then my anxieties would cease. I have witnessed this level of peace in the lives of faithful elderly Catholics, including priests and religious who look forward to the day of judgment after a life of faithful service.

We frequently take for granted our faith in Jesus Christ and His triumph over sin and death. We shouldn’t, because that lack of faith is the key to our anxiety. Imagine all those who don’t walk with Jesus. When things don’t go according to their plans, anxiety about many things and ultimately death set in. I can often tell a person’s relationship with Our Lord (or lack thereof) by the amount of anxiety that they say they are experiencing at any given moment.

Let me give you an example of how faith can help us change crippling anxiety. It all stems from our perspective and how we view the world and what we face as human beings. In other words, do we see things from a natural perspective without faith or a supernatural perspective with faith? Say our country experienced an economic depression. The natural or worldly perspective would be that our country has fallen apart. A supernatural perspective includes the idea that our country became vulnerable to financial ruin when we abandoned God and His will for us, embraced greed, and began relying on money to give us happiness.

The result for non-believers is that we would live life in a despairing nightmare until we die. But for men and women of faith, there is the belief that nothing is a coincidence. An intentional disciple trusts God and sees Him at work no matter what.

As we know by human experience, we learn and grow spiritually in the valleys of life far more than on the mountaintops. Perhaps an economic crisis would lead us to a simpler and more faithful existence. Perhaps instead of fretting over our investment portfolios with fear and trepidation, we would be forced to live a simpler existence that didn’t include keeping up with neighbors and managing assets. A simpler life is often a Godlier one. Perhaps we would have more right priorities: God and family without unbridled competition to have the most and the biggest things.

I think of the spiritual writer and nun St. Julian of Norwich. Julian faced the black death, a near-fatal illness, societal upheaval, religious and political tensions, and yet she often said that “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” Or St. Teresa of Avila’s convicting words about fear and anxiety:

Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. They who have God lack nothing. God alone is enough. – St. Teresa of Avila

It is a blessing to be a Catholic with a deep biblical and ecclesial tradition to cling to during times of anxiety. We do have something to share with our world: that faith in Jesus is a key to surviving in this anxious and troubled world. Jesus Christ is the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings, Who will come to judge the living and dead and then create new heavens and a new earth—a new world without sin, suffering, death, and anxiety.

God Bless.

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