“Depression ... is a spiritual cross sent to us in order to cleanse our former sins.”
In his Lausiac History, Palladius writes of a certain Pachon, an Egyptian monk living in Scete. At the time when Palladius met Pachon the former was struggling with concupiscence. Palladius revealed his thoughts to Pachon, a man of some sixty years at the time. Pachon told him that for forty years he had been struggling to work out his salvation in the desert. At the age of fifty he began to struggle greatly with lustful thoughts and desires. This lasted for twelve years, during which time the struggle got so intense that Pachon felt that God had abandoned him and fell into such a depressed state that he wished to die. "I felt so oppressed," Pachon revealed to Palladius, "that I made up my mind to die in an irrational way rather than to give in to bodily passion." So he stripped himself naked and entered a hyena's cave hoping that he would be devoured by the animals living there. In the night the animals came, licked his body, then left him. Realizing that God had spared him, Pachon returned to his cell and continued his battle with lust. This time it was much worse than before. As the struggle intensified, Pachon again sought to kill himself. He took an asp (Egyptian cobra) and dug its head into himself, wishing to be bitten. Once again, God spared him.
It was at this point that Pachon heard God speak to him in the following manner: "Keep up the fight! It was for this reason that I let you be depressed, so that you might not become haughty as a strong person, but rather might know your own weakness, and that you might not trust too much in your own way of life, but rather come running to God for help."
What is revealed to us — the readers and hearers of this story — is an understanding of depression that is radically different than the one to which we are typically exposed in our society. Depression among the saints is not a state of mental illness. It is not a maladjustment to the world. On the contrary, it is a spiritual state. Sometimes depression is given to us by God so that we might, as happened to Pachon, realize our own weaknesses and total dependence on our Creator. This latter realization is precisely what is meant by our Savior when he says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heavens" (Mt. 5:3). To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge one's total reliance on God. And, as it turns out, it is the first step on the ladder of divine ascent.
St. Ambrose of Optina, quoted above, writes that "depression comes also for other reasons: from offended self-love, because we are not getting our own way; also from vainglory when one sees that his equals enjoy greater privileges; from stressful situations during which our faith in God's Providence and hope in His mercy and omnipotent help is put to the test. We often lack faith and hope, and that is why we are tormented."
For some of us depression is a condition that often reflects one's dissatisfaction with a world that cannot truly fulfill us. Over a decade ago, while a master's student at the University of Arizona, I was fortunate enough to take an anthropology course on Social Memory. In that course we read a book edited by anthropologist Jonathan Boyarin called Remapping Memory: The Politics of Time Space. There is one line from that book, written by Boyarin, that nearly fifteen years later I have not forgotten: "The only place in the universe where we might feel at home is with the realization that we are not at home." In my mind, this very much captures the sentiment of those who live in the world but are not of the world; those whose dependence is on their Creator and not on themselves; those who "look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" (as Orthodox Christians state at the end of the Nicene-Constantinoplitan Creed). Depression, it seems to me, is often the result of this very feeling of not being at home in this world, and not knowing what to do about that. It is the not knowing what to do that often leads us into despair. And for those who have experienced this, they know that it is a terribly difficult and anxious state in which to be.
Let us not despair, my beloved, when we fall into a state of depression, but know that God is calling us to Himself. We only need to heed that call and turn to Him with every aspect of our being and cry out, as St. Makarios the Great advised, "Lord, help!"