“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers [and sisters] about those who have
died, so that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring with Him those who have died” (I Thessalonians 4:13).
I’m sitting with the family in the hospital atrium. We are waiting for the signal that the lifeless infant, but a month shy of birthing time, had been removed from her mother’s womb. Then we are to go to her side for prayers and comfort, assisting as best we are able the melancholy process of spiritual healing.
“You priests must become accustomed to these kinds of experiences,” the girl’s father says.
I cannot speak for others; however in two score years of priesthood and hundreds of death scenarios, I haven’t yet grown immune from the inner emotions that commit me to having a share in the traumas and sorrows that surround me at such times. In my understanding, two movements are always at work—one downward, the other upward. In his inimitable way, St. Paul put it so clearly in the above quotation. He was writing to a people who wondered about those who were dying in their congregation. He had spent but a brief time in their community—indeed, less than a month. He received word that they were confused about the Second Coming of Christ. Would those dead or dying before that time have a share in His glory? St. Paul affirms to them that they will. Dead and alive will all be caught up together to meet the Lord.
He, they and we all are aware of the anguish demonstrated by those without hope. They wallow in their grief, sometimes to the end of their own lives. They have no comfort nor consolation, because it requires courage to affirm hope in the Lord. Hope and faith are partners in healing the hearts of the bereaved. Faith is trust that God’s plan is at work even when it brings pain and tragedy to our lives. It requires faith in God, but also faith in the God within us, the confidence that we have the equipment to weather the storms of life and continue to the end of our days on earth assured that He is in control of the universe, evidence to the contrary.
We would be blind and foolish to ignore the tragic nature of death. It pounds on the hearts of family and friends, beating them into submission, if possible. Death is rightly called the last enemy. Whatever else that blocks the narrow path of our salvation, death looms largest. This is the downward movement. No sensible priest or minister would fail to acknowledge its power. We also grieve with the suffering. We cannot dismiss it with some happy talk at the time of mourning. This process is called in Greek kenosis. It reflects the concern of the Holy Trinity for the plight of humanity. God comes to us where we are, in order to take us to where He is. Why does He care so much? We have no better explanation than love. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….” (John 3:16).
In that love is our hope. Here is the turn-around point. Grief has a bottom. It does end—at least for those with the precious gift of hope. Hope provides the wings that waft us ever upward out of the gloom and darkness of our grief, anger, anguish and even self-pity [How can God do this to us?] and raises us up on invisible currents of spiritual air, ever upwards towards the Kingdom where those who have gone before us to their rest await our arrival.
So I sit in quiet prayer with those in mourning, waiting for the appropriate moment to offer the wondrous gift of hope, taking them in stages out of the “valley of the shadow of death” to the light more glorious than sunshine, the inner illumination from Him who whispers in our souls: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”