Transcript: Well, a mental illness... In my experience, I suffered more over my father's illness than Pedro's, because mental illness is hard to understand and hard to share. With Pedro, at least he could say, "Look the cancer is here, it hurts here," or "I'm going to explain it," and you could see it in his face. It's easy to empathize when you can see the suffering. With mental illness, you seem to see a healthy person stuck in bed, a healthy person who won't talk to you, a healthy person who just... who says whatever.

The way we carried it, the way my mother and Pedro carried it, was acceptance: accept him and try to reason, to think. First, he's suffering more than you are. These are very dark thoughts, and he needs time. And going to the psychologist, taking medication, helped him a lot. 

Acceptance. Also accepting that mental illness is very solitary. It's the sick person with his head. You have to know and give that consolation, like, "Don't worry about me. I'm okay." For me, my father's depression helped me a lot. It was the same time as COVID, and there I saw my vocation as a supernumerary of Opus Dei, thanks to my father's depression. I mean, thanks to Pedro, I'd already seen that I wanted to be part of Opus Dei, but when he died and we were... Carlos went to Spain. It was my father and I at home in the lockdown, and my father was depressed, and so it was my turn to take care of the family.

Being there helping my mother, listening to her, and then with my father, although he was there on the couch, he didn't talk. So I sat beside him. I told him about the day and we watched a movie, I told jokes, although he didn't respond. I realized there that, ultimately, I see vocation as the place you can love more. Whether it's in a family, in a celibate vocation, in the priesthood... Where can you love more? Go there.

I realized that where I could love the most was in the family, caring for my father with his depression. It's also about seeing that in the most difficult things, great things come about, very good fruits, like my vocation. Pedro's cancer brought so many people close to God. There's also this idea of co-redemption, through the Cross, through Jesus - this isn't my own insight - but Jesus wanted to save us from our sins with the Cross, and we too need to help Him, relieve Him with the Cross by offering our suffering. Helping Him a little from there. If you see it that way, well, it was very encouraging for my father because good things have grown because of that illness.