Father Dave welcomes friend of the show Greg Willits to discuss how the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort have impacted Greg’s mental health journey. He is the founder and executive director of RosaryArmy.com, as well as the host of the Rosary Army podcast with his wife, Jennifer. Greg is the author of “God Doesn’t Hate Me, After All: Discovering Louis de Montfort’s Love of Eternal Wisdom.”
Greg details how he has not publicly spoken about his personal experience with mental health issues, abuse, and trauma until now. “I just turned 55, and for those first five decades, this is not something that we talked about very much,” he says. “You don’t want to say you feel better when you hear the suffering of other people, but it sometimes makes it easier for you to carry your cross when you know someone else is carrying a similar cross.”
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“So when I had a bit of a breakdown and I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in 2018, [Jennifer and I] realized this might be something that God is asking us to finally reveal publicly so that other people could benefit from it,” Greg says. “The last several years have been years of intense healing and grace. People ask, ‘So you’re healed now?’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s an ongoing struggle.’”
Greg explains how Saint Louis de Montfort’s “The Love of Eternal Wisdom” has accompanied him in his struggles. “I was unaware of this book until about five years ago it was hidden in between a bunch of his better-known books,” he says. “de Montfort talks about Jesus before the Incarnation — so from the beginning of time — then at the moment of incarnation and after. Jesus had all that planned out, and he had us in mind at each of those moments of time as well.”
He elaborates how this realization helped him sort through trauma in his life. “Both Jennifer and I were sexually abused as children, and it’s a very difficult subject for us to talk about. …Inevitably you want to ask the question, ‘Well, Jesus, where were you? How did you let that happen? Why did you let that happen?’” Greg says. “De Montfort showed very clearly how oftentimes you don’t see Jesus in the moment, but you can see Jesus in things that have happened in the past.”
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Greg discusses how his new book showcases de Montfort’s “The Love of Eternal Wisdom” in its entirety combined with Greg’s reflections from his own life. “The Love of Eternal Wisdom is about the love of Jesus, and how do we learn to love him? That was an eye-opener for me, because as someone who has struggled throughout my whole life with trauma and hiding it, I very much struggled to accept love from the people around me.” he says. “I felt like God’s love was something I had to earn. [Despite] all these years of ministry, I got to a point in 2019 where I looked in the mirror — and I’m not talking to myself, but I’m talking to God —- and I said, ‘You hate me. You obviously hate me.’ I’m accusing God of the one thing he’s incapable of and have fallen into that lie.”
He shares how turning to Jesus on the cross helped him handle his own pain. “If you ever want to find Jesus Christ, look to the cross, and he’s there and he’s welcoming you with arms wide open. He’s asking us to embrace him in the same way, to open up our arms onto our crosses so that we can embrace him in turn. That’s a difficulty, but there’s joy in it,” Greg says, and hopes people can find comfort in his story, “If you’ve experienced pain, trauma, and you struggle to feel loved, it’s not too late. God, who works outside of time retroactively, can help you see where he was loving you at those times.”
