I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.
Today is the Feast of All Souls.
On this day we remember those who have gone before us in death, especially the poor souls in Purgatory. This Feast follows the Feast of All Saints to remind us of the hope that we have in our Heavenly homeland.
But this day can be very complicated, especially if we remember those we love who have died. And the older I get, the longer that list becomes. Remembering them and remembering how much I miss them is not at all a pleasant experience. I miss my grandfather’s smile. I miss how my friend and I would argue about comic books. I miss my mother’s laugh. But now those things are absent from this world.
In many ways, it feels like I am still mourning.
Don’t get me wrong, time has brought its own measure of healing to all of these losses. But they are still losses and I feel them as such.
St. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” And indeed I have encountered those with amazing faith who greet the death of a loved one with complete trust in the Lord. These saintly people rejoice in their loved one’s entrance into Paradise and live in the hope of being reunited. This is an excellent witness and one that all of us should strive to emulate.
But for those of us who are not as saintly, it can be much more challenging. CS Lewis read this verse from St. Paul after the death of his beloved wife Joy and wrote “It astonishes me, the way we are invited to apply to ourselves words so obviously addressed to our betters. What St. Paul says can comfort only those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' “
What Lewis is getting at is that the saintly ones are focused on the loved one. But for the rest of us, we are also grieving for our own loss. St. Augustine found himself in this dilemma when a friend of his died and he was heartbroken. He wrote “Miserable I was, and miserable is every soul fettered by the friendship of perishable things — he is torn to pieces when he loses them, and then is sensible of the misery which he had before ever he lost them.” (Confessions IV.6)
Lewis commented on this section in The Four Loves when he wrote “Of course this is excellent sense. Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel…I think that this passage in the Confessions is less a part of St. Augustine’s Christendom than a hangover from the high-minded Pagan philosophies in which he grew up. It is closer to Stoic ‘apathy’ or neo-Platonic mysticism than to charity. We follow One who wept over Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus, and, loving all, yet had one disciple whom, in a special sense, he ‘loved’…There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
In other words, loving others means that we are vulnerable to pain and loss. It is true that we should strive to live the words of St. Paul and focus on the happiness of those who have gone before us. That is why today especially it is a wonderful act of charity to pray for the souls in Purgatory, so that their purgation may come to a swift end and they may finally know eternal rest.
But the pain we feel now, the pain we still feel after many years is a sign of the love that we still have. The loss that we’ve experienced leaves scars on our hearts. A priest once said to me that people think scars are ugly, but they are not. Scars are beautiful. They are beautiful because they show us where we were wounded and have been healed. The grief we still feel is not a sign that we have not healed, but that we are healed or healing.
On this day we remember those who have gone before us in death, especially the poor souls in Purgatory. This Feast follows the Feast of All Saints to remind us of the hope that we have in our Heavenly homeland.
But this day can be very complicated, especially if we remember those we love who have died. And the older I get, the longer that list becomes. Remembering them and remembering how much I miss them is not at all a pleasant experience. I miss my grandfather’s smile. I miss how my friend and I would argue about comic books. I miss my mother’s laugh. But now those things are absent from this world.
In many ways, it feels like I am still mourning.
Don’t get me wrong, time has brought its own measure of healing to all of these losses. But they are still losses and I feel them as such.
St. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” And indeed I have encountered those with amazing faith who greet the death of a loved one with complete trust in the Lord. These saintly people rejoice in their loved one’s entrance into Paradise and live in the hope of being reunited. This is an excellent witness and one that all of us should strive to emulate.
But for those of us who are not as saintly, it can be much more challenging. CS Lewis read this verse from St. Paul after the death of his beloved wife Joy and wrote “It astonishes me, the way we are invited to apply to ourselves words so obviously addressed to our betters. What St. Paul says can comfort only those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' “
What Lewis is getting at is that the saintly ones are focused on the loved one. But for the rest of us, we are also grieving for our own loss. St. Augustine found himself in this dilemma when a friend of his died and he was heartbroken. He wrote “Miserable I was, and miserable is every soul fettered by the friendship of perishable things — he is torn to pieces when he loses them, and then is sensible of the misery which he had before ever he lost them.” (Confessions IV.6)
Lewis commented on this section in The Four Loves when he wrote “Of course this is excellent sense. Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel…I think that this passage in the Confessions is less a part of St. Augustine’s Christendom than a hangover from the high-minded Pagan philosophies in which he grew up. It is closer to Stoic ‘apathy’ or neo-Platonic mysticism than to charity. We follow One who wept over Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus, and, loving all, yet had one disciple whom, in a special sense, he ‘loved’…There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
In other words, loving others means that we are vulnerable to pain and loss. It is true that we should strive to live the words of St. Paul and focus on the happiness of those who have gone before us. That is why today especially it is a wonderful act of charity to pray for the souls in Purgatory, so that their purgation may come to a swift end and they may finally know eternal rest.
But the pain we feel now, the pain we still feel after many years is a sign of the love that we still have. The loss that we’ve experienced leaves scars on our hearts. A priest once said to me that people think scars are ugly, but they are not. Scars are beautiful. They are beautiful because they show us where we were wounded and have been healed. The grief we still feel is not a sign that we have not healed, but that we are healed or healing.
