The Divine Physician and a Christian Approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing
A Pastoral Letter
Most Rev. Michael F. Burbidge
January 2026
“May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly;
and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless
at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”
1 Thessalonians 5:23
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Introduction
To be Christian is to celebrate the coming into our midst of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The mystery of the incarnation, of God’s personal entrance into history, and the good news of Christ’s revelation which we call the Gospel, changed everything. We have simply never been the same, for ever since our Lord’s life, death, and resurrection and the beginning of the Church’s mission, we have lived with an earnest hope for authentic and everlasting happiness.
Even before the advent of Christ, and before our definitive knowledge of God’s goodness and the possibility of heavenly peace, humanity knew that all was not well. We knew that we needed a Savior. Aristotle observed that every human person “pursues the good, or apparent good” in his or her actions. We all strive for goodness, or what we think will bring us happiness, but we also tend to confuse what is truly good with what only appears to be good. The very fact that we have trouble distinguishing objective goods from objective evils was a sign to the ancients of our brokenness. This helps explain why Aristotle also spoke of hamartia, literally meaning “to miss the mark,”1 to describe the basic tendency of the human person to fall short of perfection. In fact, the Gospels, in the original Greek, speak of hamartia,2 the modern word for which will be immediately recognizable: it is what we call sin, the rejection of God, the source of all good. The negative effects of our separation from him so obviously frustrate our natural desires for health, wellbeing, and lasting happiness. We see that even before Christ’s incarnation, humanity recognized it was “sick” and required divine intervention if minds and hearts were ever to be set right.
All of us experience the consequences of original sin. All of us experience the tendency to miss the mark and the sickness of mind and heart that results from our fallen condition. And all of us, in one way or another, experience crises that affect our mental health and wellbeing, threatening our capacity to experience the happiness and peace which God wishes for us. Fortunately, all of us (whether we realize it or not) also experience the desire for God’s grace, which acts like a divine medicine poured out as balm for our anxieties, hurts, and wounds.
As a priest and bishop, I have observed with increasing pastoral concern the emergence of a broad crisis concerning mental health that is negatively impacting Americans, and especially young people, in terms of their spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. The intent of this pastoral letter is therefore to offer encouragement and guidance, in light of the teachings of Christ and the Gospel, to all who wish to confront and overcome the modern world’s challenges to mental health and wellbeing. In this pastoral letter, I offer my reflections on the proper place of counseling in the Catholic life—when and in what manner we should make use of it in our pursuit of that authentic happiness that is holiness.
Our Savior, the Divine Physician
The early Church recognized our Lord through his actions and words as the Divine Physician, the healer and Savior for all persons. Jesus Christ came to heal the wounds of humanity and restore us to health, and in this way his coming was the true sign of hope which humanity had so long sought.
In sacred Scripture, Christ observes, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do” (Matthew 9:12). Throughout the Gospels, we see our Lord acting as a healer, revealing his authority over ailments affecting mind, body, and soul. He heals paralytics, cures the blind and deaf, restores health to lepers and the possessed, and even raises the dead. This explains why the Church describes our Lord as “physician of our souls and bodies” (CCC 1421) and why the sacramental life of the Church continues to bring healing through the sacraments of reconciliation and anointing of the sick in Christ’s name. Although physical healings are naturally sought by any who are sick, the Church follows our Lord in emphasizing the primacy of spiritual healing, the importance of faith in God, and fidelity to his commands as the key for everlasting salvation.
The Gospels repeatedly show that faith is essential for our health and wellbeing in this life and the next. When Christ approaches two blind men who cry out to be healed, he first asks “Do you believe that I can do this?” When they affirm their belief, their eyes are opened (Matthew 9:27-29). When a contrite woman anoints the feet of Jesus, he declares: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50). When our Lord cures lepers, and one returns in thanksgiving, he likewise assures him: “your faith has saved you” (Luke 17:19). Perhaps most famously, when a woman who had been sick for 12 years desperately reaches out amidst a crowd and merely touches Christ’s garment with faith, our Lord stops and addresses her personally: “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction” (Mark 5:34).
In each instance, the Gospels encourage us to notice not so much the miraculous cures our Lord grants, not simply the restoration of bodily, physical, mental, or social health and wellbeing, but on a profound level the fact that Christ affirms faith as the crucial factor—even in circumstances where such faithfulness seems in the eyes of the wider world to be desperate, foolish, or even absurd. Faith and trust in God are shown to be the keys to everlasting health and wellbeing for humanity, a fact which should encourage each of us as we confront and overcome a deepening crisis concerning our mental health and wellbeing in modern life. At the same time, we must be careful in recognizing that not all who ask for healing are healed, either in the way they want or in the timeframe for which they may hope.3 As we grow in faith, may we grow in openness to God’s will for our good—even, and perhaps especially, in ways that are challenging and uncertain from our limited perspectives.
The Modern World, Mental Health and Wellbeing, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Each one of us is affected personally by the growing mental health crisis unfolding in the modern world. The scale and scope of this crisis are staggering. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five American adults experience mental health challenges each year.4 For one in 20 American adults, such illnesses are serious and prevent them from working effectively or engaging in healthy relationships5. Today, more than 8.4 million Americans provide care to an adult struggling with emotional or mental health issues, and these caregivers spend an average of 32 hours per week providing care to their struggling loved ones.6 Troublingly, mental health issues have become so common that depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide.7
Despite the large number of people in our country suffering from poor mental health, fewer than half pursue and receive treatment. Even those actively seeking treatment often delay getting help, with most people waiting more than a decade after difficulties begin before they start counseling.8 Although the modern world promises autonomy, liberty, and the right of all to pursue a kind of happiness, increasingly it seems to produce depression and hopelessness. As people of faith, Christians have a particular responsibility to address the stigmas that prevent people from seeking help and to remove barriers that keep so many stuck in patterns of isolation and misery.
One of the chief concerns underlying the crisis of mental health issues in our world today is an increase among all persons, and especially young adults, suffering from loneliness. This was true prior to the appearance of COVID-19 and has only continued to worsen. Children and young adults in our country experience higher rates of loneliness and isolation than any prior generation, with the majority of members of Generation Z (born from 1997-2012) reporting that they felt lonely at least one or two times per month during their childhood.9 No doubt this is due to many factors, including an overreliance on artificial and digital media as methods of connection to others, albeit ones that fundamentally lack the essential embodied qualities of genuine personal encounter. The social isolation that follows has detrimental results on physical and mental health, which in turn leads to higher risks of unsafe behavior such as substance abuse.10 While the effect of this isolation is most pronounced among teens and young adults, none of us is immune. A recent survey of how Americans spend their time shows that over the last 20 years, we have spent more time in isolation and less time connecting with our communities, friends, and even family members residing in the same home.11 We all feel this disconnection in daily life, and because we are increasingly “alone together,”12 we naturally risk depression and despair.
At times, we may even attempt to use our own wounds and brokenness as a way to connect with others. We may become tempted to allow our hurts to define us as we seek to identify ourselves. And although a desire to find commonality in shared experiences is natural, when we define ourselves by our illness or traumas, we can allow those sorrows to take on a life of their own. We may create situations where our personal identity becomes entangled with a diagnosis. We may label ourselves as temperamentally depressive or scrupulous and even come to identify with such labels as if they were unchangeable realities. Instead, we always should remember our true identity as a son or daughter of God, seeing ourselves as made in his image and likeness and having the privilege of bearing crosses that may mysteriously contribute to our sanctification and that of our wider world.
It is a simple fact that many of the challenges we experience today have their roots in the breakdown of the family, a breakdown accelerated over the past century by the progressive disintegration of sacramental marriage as a cultural and social norm. Children first discover their inherent dignity in the context of their family, and specifically through relationship with their father and mother. The Church upholds marriage as a sacramental reality not only for the sake of husband and wife, but also for the sake of children who have a right to their natural parents and the stability that flows from faithful marital love.
Today, tragically, 40 percent of American children are born outside the context of marriage.13 This basic social instability, coupled with the equally destabilizing presence of divorce, means that 35 percent of teenagers today live without one of their biological parents in the home.14 Consequently, America’s culture of family instability often leads to emotional instability and a diminished confidence in relationships. The Church promotes the sanctity of marriage and the good of the family and its members, and for this reason encourages all mothers, fathers, and children, regardless of marital or family circumstances, to see themselves as agents for the healing and restoration of our nation and our culture.
When we lack connection with others, we often lack a sense of purpose. As human persons, we are naturally social and drawn to relationship with others. This is why isolation often leads many young people to feel a sense of drifting and meaninglessness. One recent report showed that 58 percent of young adults said that they experienced little or no purpose or meaning in their lives over the previous month.15 Unsurprisingly, half of the young adults surveyed reported that their lack of clear purpose in their lives negatively affected their mental health.16
Hopelessness, in other words, has a direct impact on health. The terms “diseases of despair” and “deaths of despair” relate to those who—when faced with a sense that their personal, material, and social future is bleak—engage in substance abuse or other forms of sometimes fatal self-harm.17 Despair has increased significantly over the past generation; it now accounts for the fifth leading cause of death in our nation.18
The promises of the modern world, including its assurance that we can or should be liberated from any personal bond or human connection not consciously and constantly chosen, turn out to be false. Fortunately, the distinctively American pursuit of happiness can rightly orient us if we understand this pursuit in the way America’s founders did, as a virtuous happiness resulting from the health and wellbeing of body, mind, and soul, with the nation and her people rightly oriented to God as the author of our lives. Our pursuit of happiness can quickly go astray whenever it becomes disconnected from the Christian understanding of happiness as a fruit of faith and virtue. When we break free from the falsehoods and trivialities of the modern world, we can recover the knowledge our founders had: happiness for the nation and for citizens alike depends, first and foremost, on our relationship with God.
A Christian Understanding of Mental Health and Happiness
When we speak of a Christian understanding of happiness and of mental health and wellbeing, we are speaking about the genuine flourishing of the human person. The difference between Catholic and secular views of happiness and mental health is the difference between a “freedom for” versus a “freedom from” mentality. The secular world takes a “freedom from” approach—a freedom from anxieties, burdens, distress, and even their symptoms. Certainly, these sorts of freedoms are desirable and important, but they are not ends in themselves. A Christian approach to mental health, wellbeing, and the pursuit of happiness purposefully addresses and reduces problems, often through counseling, but also goes deeper.19 The Christian “freedom for” perspective encourages us to recognize freedom as a gift meant for our holistic flourishing. The Christian approach guides us to consider what God asks of us in our lives. When we do this, we may move beyond anxiety or distress and any attempt to manage ourselves, and embrace faith and trust in God who desires our good and calls us toward an eternal happiness that will only ever be experienced imperfectly and incompletely in this life (1 Corinthians 13:12). When we come to see by the light of God, we are given the grace to contemplate the everlasting happiness and transcendence of heaven. In this way, we may experience even in this life the abiding joy and peace that characterize Christian men and women in every generation.
The joy and peace of Christian happiness are truly distinct from secular notions, which are often fleeting responses to our daily circumstances. We may be happy when we hear our favorite song, when a friend tells a good joke, or when we enjoy a particular meal. This sort of happiness fades. The Christian, by God’s grace, sees beyond changing circumstances and temporal experiences to deeper and more meaningful realities. In a recent address to missionary priests, Pope Leo XIV offered remarks that could just as easily apply to all the faithful. Truly all Christians are called to “radiate our personal experience of friendship with Christ, which shines through in our way of living, in our attitude, in our humanity, and in how we are capable of living out healthy relationships.”20 When we choose faith and trust in God, especially amid challenging and even overwhelming circumstances, we enjoy the joy and peace of the Christian recognition that, just as we are not the authors of our own lives, neither will we be the authors of our own lasting happiness.
How then do we pursue Christian happiness and mental health in a world full of sorrows? We must be willing to connect with others. We are made for community and find purpose when given the chance to cultivate authentic relationships with others and practice virtues like compassion. All things that are devotional and holy are also healthy for the human psyche, including the sacrament of reconciliation on a regular basis. Although we all experience the effects of original and personal sin, we should not imagine that everyone requires counseling. There are ordinary means of happiness and sanctification in everyday life, in the form of friendships, family relationships, and community building. Due to the structure of our society, we must be more intentional than ever about our daily priorities, especially including our prioritization of relationship with friends and family. Encouraging research shows that positive social connections are not only essential for mental health but also improve physical health and life expectancy.21 For some, this is relatively easy to pursue while for others, whether due to anxiety, depression, or trauma, the notion of pursuing fulfilling relationships and engaging in positive connections may appear overwhelming. In such cases, it is essential to seek professional counseling.
Christian Counseling Restores Us for Our Daily Pilgrimage
A mental health professional, anchored in truth and guided by faith, can help persons challenge negative and false ways of seeing the world, process and heal from old wounds, and encourage the development of new and positive behaviors and habits. A good counselor will have a Christian understanding of the world and of the human person rather than a secular one: that persons are oriented to God, to authentic human relationships, and to the practice of the virtues which help us to glimpse heaven even now.
Counseling involves sharing our mind and heart with another in the hope of being restored to health and wellbeing in body, mind, and soul. This is why it is so important that a counselor acknowledges key truths such as the God-given sacredness of human life, the sanctity of sacramental marriage, and the centrality of the family. A counselor with a Christian theological anthropology—that is, the understanding of our origin and ultimate destiny in God—is better equipped to help us overcome the obstacles that prevent us from being fully able to follow God’s call in our lives.
Counseling, rightly anchored in a Christian theological anthropology, restores and equips us for our daily pilgrimage. As we journey through this life to heaven, we benefit by realizing that the purpose of counseling is neither to eliminate all hardships nor to establish a perpetual dependency on therapy!22 Counseling should help us accept and embrace challenges in our lives with the confidence that comes from a preeminent relationship with God and the healing offered through relationship with his Son, the Divine Physician. Such counseling can assist in our healing and recovery and help us to regain our freedom of action in our daily lives.
As Catholics, we understand that suffering, whether physical or mental, is an invitation to draw near to Christ at the foot of the cross. We can find purpose and meaning in suffering if we first recognize that everyone suffers to different degrees and that peace is possible when suffering is offered to God with confidence and earnest prayer. The Christian can learn to accept and even embrace suffering, moving beyond purely personal concerns and focusing on the good of others. In turn, these personal connections strengthen us in courage and compassion for others and prompt us to transcend our circumstances.
The Catholic understanding of human flourishing concerns what the Church has come to call the integral development of the whole person, in mind and body, ordered to the greatest possible happiness in this life and eternal communion with God in the beatific vision. As Saint Pope Paul VI observed, the Church is truly an expert in humanity23 and knows that human flourishing cannot be merely reduced to an attempt to minimize negative experiences or maximize positive ones. In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI speaks to the importance of recognizing that to be human means to embrace both the good and the bad and through these experiences, ever more confidently turn to Christ:
“It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.”24
Suffering, however, should not be confused with despair. If suffering is a hardship that allows us to see beyond ourselves, moving closer toward Christ and others, despair on the other hand lacks that other-focused quality. Despair is a pain that isolates us from others, keeps us focused on our own struggles, and blinds us to any larger meaning and purpose. Although suffering may be redemptive for the Christian, despair has no positive purpose. God may allow suffering in our lives, but he forbids despair. Any person experiencing recurrent or unrelenting despair should seek assistance and support.
All of us are pilgrims, journeying with the hope of eternal happiness with God in heaven and with Christ, the Divine Physician, as our healer and hope on earth. Our paths will be difficult at times. Christ tells us, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). We can be confident that Christ, our friend, is truly wonder-counselor and Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:5). We are called to embrace whatever he permits us to bear, knowing that by humbly and resolutely carrying our burdens and with the help of his grace, we may grow in the virtues of courage and steadfastness as well as faith, hope, and love. By God’s grace, we can strive in this world after the everlasting happiness which he promises to those who love him!
Our Hope for Everlasting Happiness
May we prayerfully reflect together on the importance of faith and “placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). We must rely on our faith in times of hardship.
We also must be willing to act for the good of those who need help. In response to growing needs, the Catholic Diocese of Arlington has established a Mental Health Council. The purpose of this council is to assist in providing guidance and resources to support those experiencing significant mental health challenges as well as their loved ones. We are also committed to providing training opportunities for mental health counselors so that they are better able to provide life-transforming services grounded in a Catholic anthropology that emphasizes the sacredness of all human life and the dignity of every person. It is my sincere hope that these efforts will be a beacon to those crying out for help in the dark, so that they are able to find the assistance they need and come to experience Christian happiness and full flourishing now and forever.
Finally, in our daily lives, may we reflect without ceasing on God’s promise that, “You are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). May we pray with humility and trust, seeking whenever necessary the assistance of professional experts who are Christ’s instruments for our healing. May we actively engage with the sacramental life of the Church and support one another in our parish communities. And may we find consolation and peace in the frequent reception of the Eucharist and the adoration of the one who promises to save us, forever and always.
Heavenly Father,
healer of those who are sick,
hear our prayers for our brothers and sisters
who are afflicted in mind and body.
In your mercy and love
restore them to health
and grant them strength and consolation in your Son
and through the comforting presence
of the Holy Spirit, the Consoler.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen.
Resources
- CatholicTherapist.com – A national directory of mental health professionals screened for faithful adherence to the Magisterium of the Church.
- Catholic Psychotherapy Association – A professional organization created to support mental health practitioners by promoting the development of psychological theory and mental health practice which encompasses a full understanding of the human person, family, and society in fidelity to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
- Divine Mercy University – An international center for the scientific study of psychology with a Catholic understanding.
- National Catholic Mental Health Campaign – A year-round initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to encourage all people of good will to respond to the ongoing mental health crisis across the United States.
Endnotes
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