The St. Dymphna Society is an organization whose goal is to work within the Church to remove the stigma that is attached to mental illness. Its patron is a 7th century martyr named Dymphna who was beheaded by her own father for not consenting to an incestual relationship. One of the slogans posted on its website is, “The medicine we need is inside us already; dig for it.” When the mentally ill look outside themselves for approval, acceptance, and credibility they seldom find it. Employers don’t want to hire them, peers don’t want to include them, and sometimes, sad to say, family members look down on them or even ridicule them. The good news for the mentally ill is that God has already planted an answer for them, inside their hearts. Their quest, then, is to “dig for it.”
Ironically true mental illness is manifested by those who think the answer to life is outside themselves—popularity, career, power, money, possessions, and various forms of pleasure. It takes a wake-up call from God to help them realize that these solutions don’t work. Those categorized as “mentally ill” begin this inner quest long before the “normal” people know there is such a journey.
Jesus speaks to what is hidden inside us today (Luke 13:18-21).
“To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”
When a woman mixes the powdery yeast in with the flour it disappears. At first glance it looks like the same old flour before it was yeasted. Hidden inside the flour, the yeast seems, at first, to have no value. Little by little, however, this hidden substance begins to explode and do its work. Though it has disappeared into the flour, it gives new life to dough—it causes it to “rise from the dead” and grow into the fullness of bread. As a person takes a piece of bread, do they see the yeast? What happened to it? Yes, the yeast is there–hidden and invisible having brought the dough to perfection.
When we were baptized a pinch of “spiritual yeast” was mixed in with the dough of our beings. We call that pinch of dough the life of the Holy Spirit. A baby with the yeast of the Holy Spirit looks exactly like a neighboring baby who does not have it. As the child with the Holy Spirit grows, however, and allows this yeast to grow within itself, the effects of the yeast become more evident in its life. This hidden power, no more than a small seed, continues its work into adulthood. It never stops working to transform us into the persons God created us to be. One caution, however, is that the full work of the Holy Spirit does not happen automatically—it requires our consent and cooperation. If we do not welcome the yeast God has hidden inside of us and “dig for it,” we risk remaining globs of lifeless, flat dough that never made it to the bread stage afraid to be put into the oven.
So, we pray “Come Holy Spirit” awaken and explode within us so that we can become mature in Christ as God intended. Teach us to value what you’ve planted inside us more than we value all the “trinkets” that the world presents to us. Give us the courage to dig for the medicine within when we begin to realize that the “medicine” on the outside doesn’t get the job done.
