I don’t remember when I first enrolled in and started wearing the brown scapular. We had consecrated our family to the Immaculate Heart in 2017 on the one-hundredth anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima, so it may have been around that time. At this point, it is a raggedy, curling, non-descript scrap of wool. But that’s because I’ve never taken this sacramental off all these years for any significant amount of time.
Marian consecration was important to us as a family, for Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal had intervened for my wife and I in a big way. Mary converted our hearts and paved the way for sanctifying grace to live in us again. Not only that, we experienced a miracle of a second chance at life when our third son was born aided by that grace. So, we owed her everything, and “fled to her protection, and sought her intercession,” as one prays in the Memorare. The rosary has been a deadly weapon in my spiritual arsenal, and the brown scapular a spiritual buckler and shield of protection.
Because it’s almost like an extra flap of skin at this point, so I didn’t think much of it when one of the oil-tanned strings of my brown scapular snapped recently. “I’ll sew it up later,” I thought, and put it in the pocket of my cargo shorts for eventual repair. One day turned into two; we went away to the beach for a few days; and I just never found the five minutes to take some needle and thread to it.
As someone who has been delivered from the effects of a debilitating mental illness—in no small part due to returning to a state of grace, as mentioned above—my thoughts always hold a suspicious air about them. Can I trust them? Are they lying to me? In spiritual warfare thoughts can come from three places: oneself, God, or the Devil. Over the years I have learned how to discern the difference, though sometimes such thoughts can catch me off guard, the way you don’t realize you are drifting in the lane until you hit the rumble strips.
What I noticed (only now, in retrospect) during that week without my brown scapular was how dark my thoughts had become, like black clouds of consciousness settling into my psyche. And when I say dark, I don’t mean sad or bummed out—more like, “Rob, why haven’t you killed yourself already? Why are you still here? What are you waiting for?”
I didn’t have any external reason for this sudden onset of suicidal ideation: my job was stable, health was fine, loving family. That it was not my voice introducing these concepts was lost on me at the time. But I also noticed the little chinks in my armor, the little holes in the chain link fence were starting to get gnawed at—little hurts left festering, little grains of unforgiveness exploited and sprouting in my heart, assuming the worst about people, being critical and envious. The soot of venial sin.
The odd thing was, I was spending more time in prayer that past week than I had in a while, visiting our local chapel and kneeling alone for an hour or two at a time, seeking divine direction while still fighting every temptation to do something reckless. But I was doing battle handicapped; I had never given much thought to how much protection the brown scapular afforded a person until I wasn’t wearing it that week. Even my wife was noticing that I was using the “S” word (suicide) more in conversation, and it was concerning her. I resolved to stop putting off the repair to my scapular—I fished it out of my shorts pocket, stitched it up, and looped it back over my head.
By the afternoon, and after a couple hours in the adoration chapel, the barrage of negative thoughts and fantasies about taking my life dissipated. My wife and I went out to dinner for a date night, where I was honest with her about these temptations, while also admitting that they seemed to have fled after putting the scapular back on. Tracing back a week from the date of this writing, I realized it was the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel—who had given Saint Simon Stock the scapular. Perhaps Our Lady was using my negligence in spiritual protection as a lesson in grace.
The sacramentals of the Church—the Miraculous Medal and St. Benedict medal, holy water, blessed salt, and the brown scapular—are all weapons in our belt for spiritual battle. No solider goes into war empty handed, but takes all he is afforded for victory. And Satan, as liar and deceiver par excellence, will waste no opportunity to exploit our vulnerable areas for his gain. As the expression goes, we are only as strong as our weakest link.
Remember, the most important stitch in these sacramentals is faith, without which they are impotent. Sacramentals are not talismans, for we do not trust in magic like pagans, but in the power of grace—the grace of the One True God, who is incarnational. The God who equips us with the power to resist Satan and all his empty promises, through invoking the holy name of His Son Jesus, who has conquered death by death. The God who has given us the victory in Christ Jesus.
One thing I know for sure after this experience—I’ll never take my scapular off again.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Saint Simon Stock—pray for us!
Photo by John Feister on St. Anthony Messenger
