I have anxiety and depression bad too though.
Anxiety and depression crippled me for over a decade. Thanks be to God, two years ago I finally got medical help that actually worked, and I am not only back to Mass, but I am now making friends in the parish and starting a late-life career, as well as having better family relationships.
Now that I am out of the darkness, I can see that I did more harm than good yelling at myself for years that I just needed to pull myself together and get to Mass (which I would do now and then, only to fall back into isolation).
What I really needed was to get Communion to the Sick brought to me because I was emotionally and psychologically incapable of making the trek to the parish and sitting calmly for an hour.
I seriously hope you consider asking for Communion to be brought to you. And if you want to talk about possible medical options, I’ll gladly exchange experiences with you. Everybody is different, that’s why finding medicine for psychological problems is like searching for the Holy Grail.
The rest of my post may not be relevant to your experience, but because it was the driving force of mine, I thank you for the opportunity of letting me share it.
I’m now going to get on a soap box because that decade of hell, followed by these two years of God’s mercy, have made it impossible for me to hold my tongue:
I believe I could have endured the treks to and from the parish if the hour in the pews had been calm and holy. But instead of calm, there is hyped up music with no notes supplied to help us join in what is supposed to be sung prayer but instead amounts to a bad Teen Nickelodeon performance. Instead of holiness, I hear a lot of songs about our journey and psalms that have been paraphrased from authorized versions.
Top that off with a priest who could not give a homily without pointing out how evil the “pre-Vatican II Church” was, and when I did make it to Mass, it happened more than once that I had to leave the pew and go spit up bile.
Obviously, this is an over-reaction. My anxiety makes me like the Princess and the Pea - everything bothers me more than it should. Now that I have medicine, my ability to endure having disobedience shoved down my throat has greatly improved.
But the fact that my sensibilities are raw does not mean they are misguided. Upon feeling better, I have begun examining the causes of my pain. It has helped nothing to discover that over
two-thirds of the songs in our hymnal which are specifically designated for use at Communion have no mention of the Body of Christ. I hope anyone reading this will seriously ponder that. I’m not talking about two-thirds of total songs. No, it is two-thirds of
Communion songs that do not mention the Body of Christ. Of the songs that do mention it,
most refer to the Mystical Body, not the Real Presence.
My fallen self wonders how much this has to do with the money being made off of cross-over music in the Protestant community.
My redeemed self worries that there is a misguided attempt in place to make it easier for Protestants to convert which is, in reality, simply clearing the pews of Catholics who are losing their faith in the Eucharist.
And the pews are clearing like crazy in my parish. I am a convert who had to study and pray to come to believe in the Eucharist. I’m not going anywhere because I have nowhere else to go. But many cradle Catholics were not blessed with having to fight to understand the belief, so when it is not re-enforced, they’re left with nothing to draw them into the church but a bunch of hyped-up music - which they are now having to pay more for because paid singers are becoming more common.
