Grace Through Weakness: Psychological Struggle and Spiritual Transformation in the Lives of the Saints

What if psychological struggle is not the obstacle to holiness — but one of the roads through which God works most deeply?

In this course, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR — Franciscan friar, licensed psychologist, and spiritual director of over four decades — takes us inside the lives of saints whose psychological histories were anything but tidy. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, was a dependent, psychosomatically symptomatic child before the grace of God began its work in her. St. Benedict Joseph Labre showed symptoms consistent with serious mental illness and could not sustain ordinary religious life — yet he was recognized as a saint by the poor of Rome before the Church caught up. Leon Bloy's simple, demanding counsel — 'Go home and pray' — converted one of the greatest Catholic philosophers of the twentieth century.

This course gives you: a framework for reading psychological struggle and spiritual growth together without reducing one to the other; case studies of saints whose lives illuminate pathology and holiness; pastoral and clinical tools for accompanying people who are both psychologically complex and spiritually serious; a theological foundation grounded in the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person.