Those Who Mourn

by Catherine Rider

Of all the world’s paradoxes, grief is perhaps the thing that is most puzzling.  

It is somehow tangible and intangible.  Grief will, at some point, visit every person. No one escapes. Although we will all experience it differently, it is completely universal. And yet it is absolutely and life-changingly isolating.

Some of the earliest written records include things of grief. Ancient artifacts are unearthed that teach about civilizations’ cultures surrounding grief and death. We have so much research and data on the benefits of grieving with others, and somehow, we still tend to withdraw and use grief to shut others out.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The Psalms are full of expressions of every emotion from joy to thanksgiving to grief. I love flipping through the Psalms when I am unsure of what my emotions are telling me. Several years ago, as I was mourning yet another miscarriage, I googled something along the lines of “Psalms for when you are sad” and I was struck by Psalm 31.

In older translations*, it is often subtitled “an ecstasy”. And it is one of the most descriptive passages of grief that I have ever read. It begins with a staunch declaration of trust in God and His ways. Then verses 10 and 11 say:

Be gracious to me, LORD, for I am in distress; affliction is wearing down my eyes, my throat and my insides.

My life is worn out by sorrow, and my years by sighing. My strength fails in my affliction; my bones are wearing down.

I remember very vividly the headache, the stinging in my eyes, the tension in my throat and my chest, and the exhaustion and pain that I felt the first time I took that passage in and sat with it. I felt it. I thought about David, to whom it is attributed, and how he must have spent time in the very sort of position I was currently reading his words in – on the floor, curled up, because moving just felt too hard and too painful. I thought about the many millions of people who at some point read those words and identified with them.

Then I read it again, and this time I noticed a different verse.

Verse 6: Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, LORD, God of truth.

It is no accident that the very last thing Christ uttered from the Cross is taken from this Psalm. Meditating on these words uttered by David, a sinner and by Christ the Redeemer, Pope John Paul II said,

“In the Psalmist’s perspective, the man, stricken by misfortune and afflicted with suffering, surrenders his spirit into the hands of God in order to escape death which threatens him. Jesus, however, accepted death and yielded up his spirit into the Father’s hands to attest his obedience and to manifest to him his trust for a new life. His abandonment was therefore more complete and radical, more daring and definitive, more fraught with a sacrificial will.” – Papal Audience December 7, 1988

As part of the paradox of grief, the way we choose to move through grief can harden our hearts or it can soften them; it can make us more receptive to God and to neighbor, or it can make us put up walls, keeping others out. In isolation, we often choose things that lead us into more distress or trouble. We turn to things to escape the grief but as Saint Augustine wrote, “[Lord] You have made us and drawn us to Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

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Saint Robert Bellarmine wrote of this Psalm and the experience of deep grief and suffering, saying,  “those who have experienced it know what I am saying, how much joy these fountains of tears have. These tears are able to quench the unquenchable fire, that river flowing before the judgment seat…. they cultivate their own souls, as if using these tears for rain, and making the seeds of virtue grow”

Grief is a place of sorrow that can only exist where there has been love and joy. Grief gives us the choice of growth or becoming stunted. We can grow in community or shut others out. Grief forces us to wrestle with the not-so-pretty in what feels like the muddiest of places so that our souls may become beautiful. This is the paradox of grief- a gift and a curse, a punishment and our Redemption.

There is so much more to this Psalm. I encourage you to read through it over and over; to sit with it and let it speak to you. Saints and scholars from Athanasius to Pope Francis have spoken and written on the seven last words, a fitting thing to Meditate on during the season of Lent. May we, with Saint John Henry Newman (soon to be Doctor of the Church!) pray:

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.

May grief make us softer. May it cause us to be more empathetic to others and bring us closer to the bosom of Christ.

*In older translations, this is Psalm 30.

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