Sustaining Psychospiritual and Physical Health, Preventing Burnout - A Lesson from Jesus and St. Ignatius of Loyola

 Upon his own baptism and recruiting his collaborators on mission, Jesus has been busy ministering people in Galilee. Through his ministry, Jesus is also busy training his disciples to become effective “fishers of people”.  

Ever since the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, all Sunday Gospel readings indicate that Jesus has been busy with his ministry work.

The Gospel reading for the 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) – Mark 1:29-39 - was no exception in describing Jesus’ busy work, as he was so also in the Gospel reading for the 4^th Sunday – Mark 1:21-28.

You may have noticed that the ministry works of Jesus are mainly two-fold: teaching and healing. He does his work with the authority, and his works astonish people who are taught and healed. Though nobody yet know that Jesus is not just human but also divine, people were amazed in a way never before because that his authority is divine. To fully understand the nature of Jesus’ unsurpassed divine authority in his works, we need to get to know Trinity.

The busy work life of Jesus in the Gospel readings for the 4^th Sunday and the 5^th Sunday (Mark 1:21-28, 29-39) also remind us of how busy priests, deacons, nuns, and lay ministers are today. These servants of God work around the crock. 

Practicing pastoral psychology, I often meet with ministers, including priests, who have been stressed-out. What I hear from them is how overwhelming stressful their ministry works are and how less remedies they have, because their demanding ministry works leave not sufficient time and space for them to recover from harmful impacts of stress. Many of them feel as if they were slipping further down into a quagmire.

In fact, research studies, such as Francis et al. (2004)* and Rossetti & Rhoades (2014)**, report that burnout among ministers, especially priests, has been a serious concern.  These studies point out that burnout ministers tend to suffer from dissatisfaction of their works before they become burnout. Their busy demanding schedule hardly allow them to seek remedy. This is pretty much the reality of today’s ministry.

Yes, Jesus was busy with all of his ministerial works – teaching Dei Verbum (Word of God) and doing Opus Dei (Works of God) tirelessly and selflessly. In fact, Jesus is the one who priests and all other ministers model in their works.

So, has Jesus ever suffered from the kind of burnout that today’s priests and other ministers are suffering from?

The epidemic of ministers’ dissatisfaction and burnout may lead stressed and unhappy ministers into the psychospiritual state of despair as Job in the 5^th Sunday’s First reading (Job 7:1-4, 6-7) or as Elijah in 1 Kings 19:1-18 had experienced. In fact, St. Ignatius of Loyola also suffered from a similar despair during his discernment process, as he found that his original zeal in serving God only took him into increasing suffering.

Fortunately, one of these figures (Job, Elijah, and St. Ignatius of Loyola) let their despair lead to suicide or to crush their soul. They hanged on and came out of despair.

Among them, St. Ignatius of Loyola described how he overcame this darkest hours of his life, which is pretty much like the burnout that priests and other ministers today are suffering, in a way for anyone to overcome burnout or conditions like that, in his Spiritual Exercises.  Ignatius calls burnout desolation and shows a way for a burnout soul be lifted by grace of God to consolation in his Spiritual Exercises.

From the Fourth Rule on, in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius addresses desolation and how we can respond to it.  Basically, Ignatius teaches us not to become “freaked out” or not to reactively resist to it.  He sees despair is a work of Satan, his attack against us, our soul, in particular. It is to separate us from God farther and farther – to death of soul – to suicide. If we experience desolation or burnout, we just need to stay rather calm and quiet so that we can see how God’s consolation is working amidst this suffering of us.  This is like these wording in “You are mine”, my favorite Catholic hymn (I am sure yours, too) by David Haas:

I will come to you in the silence
I will lift you from all your fear
You will hear My voice
I claim you as My choice
Be still, and know I am near

I am hope for all who are hopeless
I am eyes for all who long to see
In the shadows of the night,
I will be your light
Come and rest in Me

Yes, this means that we believe in God and trust in His care and grace, which leads us to consolation.

In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius also reminds us that we may experience desolation again – even though we have successfully moved out of this darkness of suffering. This makes the Spiritual Exercises realistic, ensuring that false hope and fantasy will not be generated upon in recovering from desolation.

This also echoes these words of Julian of Norwich:

“God did not say you will not be troubled,

You will not be belaboured,

You will not be disquieted;

But God said, You will not be overcome.”

We just need to be ready for possible future challenges through the Spiritual Exercises, which helped St. Ignatius of Loyola overcome burnout and kept him resilient.

St. Ignatius of Loyola assures that trusting in God’s care for us during our desolation, not only that we can successfully come out of it but also we become more resilient to possible further attacks by Satan to put us into desolation. In this regard, the Spiritual Exercises helps us boost “spiritual immune power” against burnout – despair.

For this, in the Sixth Rule, St. Ignatius of Loyola lists the following remedies:

Prayer

Meditation

Self-Examination

Overcoming Self-Attachment

Penance

In fact, Ignatius lists prayer first.

It means that prayer is the most important factor in our response to burnout – despair. Without prayer, the rest of the remedial factors might not as efficacious as they can.

With this understanding, we can better appreciate the content of the 5^th Sunday Gospel reading – Mark 1:29-39 now.

The reading has two parts: vv. 29-34 and vv. 35-39.

The first part describes Jesus’ busy work of teaching and healing. But, the second part tells that Jesus sure took his time to pray. He kept the boundaries to ensure his sacred time and space for prayer.

Jesus was up very early in the morning, predawn. Others were still asleep. This shows that Jesus exercises his self-discipline. It leads to the boundaries to protect the sacred time and space from busyness.

This suggests that Jesus had already practicing the Spiritual Exercises – not because he had had been burnout but rather to prevent him from becoming burnout.

The above mentioned research studies do not explicitly address prayer as a helpful factor to prevent and to remedy burnout for ministers. But, given how Jesus disciplined himself and prayed though his works were so busy and demanding, prayer, as St. Ignatius of Loyola put in his Spiritual Exercises, is a very important factor to help us prevent burnout and to overcome it, if we have to suffer.

Archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cupich, wrote in his January 11 - 24, 2015 issue of the Catholic New World column:

“In fact, I have discovered in my years of pastoral leadership in the church that there is no better source of stress relief than prayer. Prayer brings us into the experience of resting in the consoling hands of God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who desires our happiness, and who intends to bring it about.”

Archbishop Cupich of Chicago describes prayer as the best antidote to burnout or desolation, comparable to God’s medicine of grace.

No doubt that Archbishop Cupich is the busiest priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago, which is the third largest diocese in the United States. It means that he is always exposed to the danger of burnout or desolation. But, as the pastor of the entire archdiocese and pastor to priests who pastor their respective parishes, he must maintain his spiritual, mental, and physical health, as busy Jesus did with his regular prayer.

These words of Archbishop Cupich, along with St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, deepens our appreciation for Mark 1:29-39, in balancing our busy work for Christ and our regular prayer. Through our prayer, we are always in touch with God, keeping the vital pipeline of the Holy Spirit and the medicine of God’s grace for our sustenance and immune power to keep up with our busy work. It is also to recover form burnout, in case we fall.

Jesus balanced his work and prayer, reflecting this Benedictine motto: Ora et Labora (prayer and work).  This also reflects another aspect of the Ignatian spirituality – dialectically balancing action and contemplation. 

When we shift too much into work, neglecting contemplation, we are more likely to suffer from 

dissatisfaction with our ministry works (teaching and healing). This symptom, unless treated with prayer and the rest of the Spiritual Exercises remedies, then, it can lead to burnout –desolation. But, as with the case of St. Ignatius himself, even we let ourselves become overwhelmed to a point of burnout with our busyness at work, through contemplative prayers, we can recover from it as we will be better recognize the consolation.


* Francis, L. J., Louden, S. H. and Rutledge, C.J.F. (2004). Burnout among Roman Catholic Parochial Clergy in England and Wales: Myth or Reality?, Review of Religious Research. 46 (1),  5-19

** Rossetti, S. J.; Rhoades, C. J. (2013). Burnout in Catholic clergy: A predictive model using psychological and spiritual variables. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality,  5(4), 335-341.