There will always be a kind of sorrow in our Christian life. For us Catholics, this is very evident in the way we make the sign of the cross and keep our crucifixes posted in our homes and places of work. It is also shown in our devotions where we often recall the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
While Pope John Paul II reminded us that we are the “Easter people” who should rejoice, it doesn’t take away our need also to recognize our grief in this fallen world.
Perhaps the main difference between our sorrows and that of the world’s is that our sorrow never leads to despair. Our belief in the risen Christ bids us to hope. We may have sorrow now, but we do not weep in vain. We may experience many difficulties, but we carry on and keep our hearts filled with the hope of our Savior.
Still, grief carries on its work while we are pilgrims in this world. Grief that reminds us of our eternal home. Grief that allows us to have more compassion with one another’s sufferings.
Who has not grieved after the death of a beloved one? Who has not experienced pain?
Our God may be risen, but He still has His scars. Our Blessed Mother may already be with Jesus in heaven, but she is still known as the Mother of Sorrows.
God knew that without such signs, we may feel abandoned in our tribulation here below. But because we are reminded that God weeps with us, we are brought into consolation. The same is true with our Blessed Mother.
“Turn your eyes incessantly to the Blessed Virgin; she, who is the Mother of Sorrows and also the Mother of Consolation, can understand you completely and help you. Looking to her, praying to her, you will obtain that your tedium will become serenity, your anguish change into hope, and your grief into love.” – Pope John Paul II
Ours then is to walk with both joy and sorrow in our hearts. We grieve but not to the point of hopelessness. We rejoice but not to the point of forgetting the sufferings or many.
Let us keep our gaze on Christ who holds both the wounds of sorrow and the joy of the resurrection!
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart…For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” – John 16:20-22 (NRSVCE)
Jocelyn Soriano writes about relationships and the Catholic faith at Single Catholic Writer. She wrote the books In Your Hour of Grief and Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief.
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You may also want to read “Can Grief Be Our Bridge to Heaven?”.
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