"DON'T BE DISCOURAGED BY ANXIETIES AND TROUBLES. LIFE IS FULL OF THEM." (Letter 102 to an unnamed Brother)
Mental Health is something that is in the news a lot and we hear a lot about it all the time. Many people suffer from some kind of mental ill health, such as addiction, gambling, drugs, alcohol and depression. People who do not understand what causes someone to get addiction to something, or to feel down all the time, say things like ''you'l be fine'' or ''what have you got to feel bad about'' or ''cheer up''. But saying those things doesn't actually help. It can even make the problem worse.
De La Salle wrote to a Brother who was feeling down and under pressure teaching in his school and he told him in his own words, don't be discouraged by anxieties and troubles. Life is full of them ". A lot of people think De La Salle as this always happy ,always smiling ,enthusiastic, cheerful, inspirational man who never complained about his life's work ,even when he and his Brothers were having awful things said about them and being attacked,or having furniture smashed and the schools burned down.
But the truth was that John Baptist himself had second thoughts about the work of the schools and bouts about whether he could or would continue. in his own words "if I had ever thought that what I did out of pure charity for the poor school teachers would make it incumbent upon me to live with them, I would have given it up at once." Many people would probably be very surprised to find out that De La Salle himself said that if he had known how much work it would be and how hard it would be to do all the work for the schools and train the Brothers, then he would not have done it.
But on the other hand, it meant when a Brother was finding life difficult that John Baptist knew exactly how he felt, because he felt like that himself. So how did De La Salle have the courage? He got the courage from his faith and his constant belief that God would look after them. which of course, He did, because the schools were a success and word of the Brothers and their great work spread across the world.